lucymt@uci.edu
RESEARCH INTERESTS
The project that I am working on involves studying how the hippocampus can affect reactivation of neural systems associated with memory and learning during sleep. This is accomplished by creating unilateral hippocampal lesions on rats and inserting a hyperdrive, which consists of multi-electrodes that records neural activities of the hippocampus and parietal cortex. These rats are subjects to training on a variety of spatial learning tasks and are trained by stimulating the medial forebrain bundle, part of the brain associated with the reward system. Individual cells and networks of cells can be analyzed by sorting out neural signals recorded during training.
During my time in the lab, I help habituate rats to the lab setting and train them to run spatial tasks through electrical stimulation of the medial forebrain bundle. When I am not training them I help sort through spiking activity that was already recorded in lab. I also make the electrodes that are implanted in to the medial forebrain bundle during surgery.