Writing Your Own Blueprint: The NIH Blueprint Diversity Conference

Thursday, April 08, 2021
Image
Mid-sagittal slice of the human brain, rendered to look like a blueprint technical drawing

The NIH Blueprint presents a workshop for diverse neuroscientists, including the DSPAN (F99/K00) Scholars, ENDURE alumni, BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 awardees, and BRAIN Initiative supplement awardees. The event will be held virtually on April 7-8, 2021 from 11am – 5pm ET.

The Lighting Talks Session will be held April 8 from 1:45 – 4:30pm ET and is open to all. The agenda and links will be posted on this page approximately one month before the event.

Writing Your Own Blueprint: The NIH Blueprint Diversity Conference provides structured opportunities for neuroscience graduate and postdoctoral fellows to: engage with NIH Blueprint Program staff, form peer to peer networks, and learn from presentations by outstanding neuroscientists. The program themes this year will focus on leadership development activities and publishing research work.

AGENDA

Time Concurrent Session A Concurrent Session B

2:00 – 2:20 pm

Cognition

  • Mark Bowren
    Multivariate Lesion-Behavior Mapping of General Cognitive Ability and Its Psychometric Constituents
     
  • Christian Cazares
    Subjective Experience and Recruitment of Orbitofrontal Cortex Cell Types during Decision-making
     
  • Lilyana Quigley
    The memory gene KIBRA regulates experience-induced changes in hippocampal neural activity   


Link: Concurrent Session A

Integrative Physiology and Behavior

  • Laura Cortes
    Epigenetic regulation of estrogen receptor alpha neurons in the male and female brain
     
  • Krissy Lyon
    Dopamine receptor D2 expression in serotonergic neurons: sex differences and role in behavioral modulation 
     
  • Hala Haddad
    The role of non-visual Opsin 3 in melanocortin receptor mediated cAMP signaling

Link: Concurrent Session B

2:20 – 2:40 pm

Cognition

  • Luis Ramirez
    What Mechanisms Underlie Top-Down Modulation of Human Visual Cortex?
     
  • Aaron Sampson
    Supplementary Motor Area Activity in Macaques Performing a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making Task





Link: Concurrent Session A

Integrative Physiology and Behavior

  • Nancy Padilla-Coreano
    Elucidating the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in social dominance
     
  • Rapheal Williams
    Influence of Chronic Stress on Economic Decision-Making in Mice
     
  • Christopher Guevara
    LRRK2 mutation perturbs behavioral, synaptic, and nonsynaptic adaptations to acute stress

Link: Concurrent Session B

2:40 – 3:00 pm

Neurodegenerative Disorders and Injury

  • Chinyere Iweka
    Assessing the metabolic status of myeloid cells after cerebral ischemia in young and aged mice
     
  • Julia Jones
    Discerning the Role of Nuclear Tyrosyl-tRNA Synthetase (TyrRS) During Stress to Uncover the Pathogenicity of TyrRS CMT Mutations
     
  • Stephanie Sandoval Pistorius
    UBQLN2 Regulation of Alpha-Synuclein in Synucleinopathies


Link: Concurrent Session A

Integrative Physiology and Behavior

  • Christopher Fields
    The role of hypothalamic H3R in repetitive behavior pathology: underpinnings of a second sickness behavior response?
     
  • Desiree Gordian
    Activation of CalcRAP-expressing neurons reduces food-intake in rats
     
  • Miriam Bocarsly
    Neuronal and molecular mechanisms underlying vulnerability towards alcohol abuse

Link: Concurrent Session B

3:00 – 3:10 pm

Break

3:10 – 3:30 pm

Neural Excitability, Synapses, and Glia

  • Laura Bell
    Investigating the Role of NG2-glia in viral infection, neuroinflammation, and epilepsy
     
  • Gabriela Carrillo
    Neuronal-glial interactions mediate the loss of perisomatic inhibitory synapses in Toxoplasma gondii infection
     
  • Jennifer DoneganInterneurons differentially innervate discrete pathways from the ventral hippocampus



Link: Concurrent Session A

Integrative Physiology and Behavior

  • Kirstie Cummings
    A prefrontal GABAergic neural ensemble encodes fear memory
     
  • Maanasa Jayachandran
    Prefrontal pathways provide top down control of memory for sequences of events
     
  • Sarah Leinwand
    Juvenile hormone drives the maturation of spontaneous neural activity and learned behavior

Link: Concurrent Session B

3:30 – 3:50 pm

Neural Excitability, Synapses, and Glia

  • Joshua Garcia
    Mechanisms underlying the stepwise disassembly of inhibitory synapses during pathogenic excitotoxicity
     
  • Kelvin De Leon
    Characterization of the Plasma Membrane Citrate Transporter (SLC13A5) in Early Infantile Epileptic Encephalopathy
     
  • Kirsten Schoonover
    Prefrontal Cortical Alterations of Actin Regulation and Energy Production in Layer 3 Pyramidal Neurons in Schizophrenia

Link: Concurrent Session A

Motivation and Emotion

  • Mitch Farrell
    Ventral Pallidum GABAergic Neurons Bidirectionally Modulate Opioid Seeking in a Rat Relapse Model
     
  • Elizabeth Sneddon-Yepez
    Medium spiny neuron contributions in the nucleus accumbens core to compulsive alcohol intake

     


Link: Concurrent Session B

3:50 – 4:15 pm

Techniques

  • Emmanuel Crespo
    A multifunctional bioluminescent integrator for controlling neural activity and functional labeling of activated circuits

Development

  • Nihal Salem
    Cell-Type and Sex-Specific Targets of Prenatal Alcohol Exposure in The Developing Mouse Cerebral Cortex: Identification of Novel Mechanisms for Teratogenesis
     
  • Andrea Silva-Gotay
    Sex-specific differences in Tlr4 expression after adolescent alcohol drinking
     
  • Leanna Hernandez
    Complement component 4 gene expression and childhood brain development: Evidence of sex-differential effects on temporal lobe structure

Link: Concurrent Session A

Motivation and Emotion

  • Kellie Williford
    Determining the role of BNSTPKCd cells in stress- and anxiety-like behaviors
     
  • Christian Bravo Rivera
    Ventral Pallidal control of Approach/Avoidance Conflict 

Techniques

  • Ismail Ahmed
    Development and Validation of Photocaged Oxytocin Analogs
     
  • Stephanie Noble
    Leveling Up: Improving power in functional connectivity by moving beyond cluster-level inference

Link: Concurrent Session B