In among the stresses and strains imposed by COVID over the past year, there have been a number of comings and goings, plus several successes.
We have had several people join the lab, including Juan Carlos Cerpa, working on a BBSRC project with Rafal Bogacz to investigate cost and benefit representation in striatal networks, Yves Weissenberger and Mohamady El-Gaby, working on a Wellcome Collaborative award with Tim Behrens and Thomas Akam to investigate cortical - hippocampal networks in flexible behaviour, and Raquel Pinacho and Francois Cinotti, working on neuromodulation of self-control.
We’ve also said fond goodbyes to Marios Panayi and Tom Jahans-Price, who have moved onto positions at NIDA and the SWC London, Hironori Ishii, who got a new position back nearer his family in Japan, and Mason Silveira, who is now a Lecturer in Psychology at the London College of Fashion (!). All were terrific scientists and wonderful people to have in the lab.
Finally, many congratulations, first, to Ines and Marios who had their beautiful study comparing anatomical connections of different sectors of rat orbitofrontal cortex published in Neuroscience and a review article on the same topic accepted in Behavioral Neuroscience; second, to Thomas who published a pre-print documenting his superb python-based hardware and software system for running experiments as well as a review considering ideas for what role dopamine might play in model-based reinforcement learning; and, thrid, Oliver who made use of the time when the lab was shut and he couldn’t continue with his doctoral work to submit a pre-print on work he and Laura did on the 5-HT2c receptor when a visiting student a few years ago. In addition, we were delighted to have both Marta and Laura selected to give virtual presentations / posters on their recent work at VIDA (both), FENS (Laura), and COSYNE (both).