I have taught a number of courses in Psychology, including General Psychology, Statistics, Research Methods, Behavioral Neuroscience, Neurophysiology, and Learning Theory. At Marquette, I teach Introductory Psychology (Psyc 1), Research Methods and Design in Psychology (Psyc 90), Biopsychology (Psyc 135), and Graduate Physiological Psychology (Psyc 235).
Our laboratory focuses on the neurobiological substrates of Pavlovian fear conditioning. We study the mechanisms of the behavioral system of fear. We employ a combination of classic neuroscience methodology and sophisticated behavioral manipulation. Our aim is to elucidate the basic neurobiological mechanisms whereby animals acquire, store, and utilize associative information. Our model of choice is Pavlovian fear conditioning, a laboratory preparation whereby subjects learn to predict aversive stimuli by virtue of learning about environmental predictors of threat. We are interested in the mechanisms whereby animals learn to predict threat, how the prediction encodes the level of threat, and how the resultant behavior allows the animal to adapt to the demands of the environment. Specific projects include:
-The role of the hippocampus in acquisition and expression of context fear.
-The ability of extrahippocampal structures to acquire and express context fear.
-The role of the opioid system in regulating the acquisition of fear.
-The role of intracellular messenger systems (particularly CamK-mediated mechanisms) in fear memory.
-The role of all of these mechanisms (circuit and cellular) in the extinction of fear memory.
