Lecture Notes

Recording Consent and Legalities

Recording and Consent: Importance of participants' consent before recording sessions. Legal variations by state (e.g., Texas allows single-party consent).
Zoom Notifications: Zoom can't ensure which state participants are in, thus default action is to ask for consent.

Initial Delay: Waiting for speaker participation (e.g., Laura Despin’s potential absence).
Speaker Line-up: 5 speakers, each with 12-15 min presentations, followed by Q&A.
Q&A Format: Raise hand or type in chat; moderator or speaker can verbalize and respond in chat.

Background: Postdoc at Cold Spring Harbor, Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. Funded by the Simons Foundation and NIMH.
Research Focus: Gonadal hormones affect neurophysiology, gene regulation, and sex-variable biology. Uses estrogen receptor studies (cut-and-run, ATAC-seq) to investigate chromatin changes.

Gene Identification: Estrogen receptor alpha binds thousands of genome sites; gene regulation by hormones impacts neuronal functions like synapse organization and excitability.
Specific Genes: Focus on genes such as voltage-gated ion channels (calcium, potassium, sodium), synaptic plasticity genes (e.g., CAMK2B).
Modeling: Created models to understand synaptic response to activity levels based on gene expression.
Sex Variability: Hormones reorganize the genome based on hormonal states in adults; dynamic model of neuron plasticity across lifespan proposed.
Mental Health: Study aims to inform on mental health outcomes for those undergoing hormone therapy.

Background: Postdoctoral research associate at Cambridge, previous fellowship at NIH.
Research Focus: Interaction between stress, hormones, immunity, and mental health.

Depression and Stress: High prevalence of depression; significant impact of early life stress on mental health.
HPA Axis Role: Cortisol impact on glucocorticoid receptors, immune system interaction, particularly glucocorticoid resistance.
Immunity and Mood Disorders: Links between autoimmune conditions and depression; anti-inflammatory treatments can help.
Clinical Trials: Data collection through ATP and BICBID studies; examining glucocorticoid sensitivity, neuroinflammation biomarkers, and depressive symptoms.
Neutrophil Focus: Importance of neutrophil levels; correlation with depression severity.
Animal Models: Using social defeat stress in mice to understand immune mechanisms and B-cell depletion impact on mood and behavior.

Background: Postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton, Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.
Research Focus: Gonadal hormone regulation of social behavior and neural networks in mice.

Social Behavior Network (SBN): Investigates how longitudinal hormone changes affect behavior and SBN activity.
Behavior Analysis: Using SLEAP for pose tracking and t-SNE for behavior mapping; observing sex differences and hormonal impacts on social behavior.
Neural Activity: Multi-site fiber photometry to record SBN activity; correlation and directionality ratio analysis to understand impact of hormone changes.

Background: Postdoctoral research fellow in computational neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Research Focus: Adaptive decision-making, integration of human behavior, electrophysiology, and computational modeling.

Asymmetric Evidence: How humans and ideal observers handle asymmetric evidence in decision-making tasks; psychometric analysis and biases in human responses.
Working Memory: Representations of environmental distributions; how working memory limitations affect decision strategies.
Future Work: Combining neural mechanisms and cognitive strategy research to understand behavioral outputs.

Background: Postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oregon, investigating olfactory-driven social behavior and its microbial influences.

Chemosensation and Microbes: Exploring how olfaction mediates animal-microbe interactions and affects social behavior.
Microbial Activation: Bacteria activating zebrafish olfactory neurons; kin and social preference observed.
Microbiota Transmission: Measuring, understanding, and analyzing transmission avenues, impacting social interaction studies.