Aldis Weible

Detailed research description:

My work deals with the in vivo side of the research being carried out in the Disterhoft laboratory. Our primary behavioral paradigm is trace eyeblink conditioning, in which an association is made between two temporally discontiguous stimuli (a tone conditioned stimulus and an air-puff unconditioned stimulus, separated by a 500ms stimulus-free trace interval). Trace eyeblink conditioning is a hippocampally dependent task. Removal of the hippocampus prior to or immediately following learning results in an anterograde amnesia which blocks subsequent performance of the task. However, a similar procedure performed 1 month after the response has been acquired does not impair subsequent performance. My work has focused on identifying structures, primarily in the cortex, that work in concert with the hippocampus to facilitate acquisition and long term retention of the learned response. Using chronic lesion, antero- and retrograde tracing, and single and multiple unit neuronal recording techniques, I have identified two structures, the rostral and caudal subdivisions of the medial prefrontal cortex, which are involved in acquisition and extinction of the trace conditioned reflex, respectively.

As is often the case in science, these findings have raised several additional questions we in the lab intend to investigate, opening a variety of opportunities for a prospective graduate student interested in behavioral/neuronal research.

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Last updated: Sunday, July 21, 2002