Thursday
April 16, 3:00pm
HSC 4E20
Colloquium announcement


Elena Choleris PhD 

Professor
Department of Psychology,
Neuroscience & Behaviour
University of Guelph
 
"Estrogen receptors in the brain rapidly affect learning and neuronal dendritic spines"
Dear MiNDS students & faculty,

I am pleased to invite you to attend the MiNDS Colloquium TODAY Thursday April 16th at 3:00 in HSC 4E20. Bring your coffee cup for coffee and cookies before the talk at 2:30.

Dr. Elena Choleris is a Professor at the University of Guelph in the Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour department. Dr. Choleris has been with the University of Guelph since 2003. Her work is currently funded by NSERC. Elena obtained her Lauea in Biological Sciences in 1994 and her PhD in Animal Biology in 1998, both from the University of Parma, Italy. She subsequently held two post doctoral positions beginning at the University of Western Ontario with Drs. Frank Prato and Peter Ossenkopp followed by a post doctoral fellowship in Dr. Donald W Pfaff's lab at the Rockefeller University, NY, NY.

The research in Dr. Choleris' lab deals with the neurobiological bases of social behavior in rodents. In particular, they focus on social learning, social recognition and affiliative and competitive behaviours during social interactions. Neurobiological systems that Elena and her students are currently investigating include the sex hormones, dopamine and acetylcholine.

Todays talk will discuss how Estrogen receptors in the brain affect learning. In addition to their delayed and long-lasting genomic actions, estrogens can also act very rapidly via intracellular signaling non-genomic mechanisms. In studies with systemic treatments with 17b-estradiol to ovariectomized mice Elena's team has shown very rapid facilitation of various learning tasks: social recognition, object recognition, object placement and the social transmission of food preferences. Overall, they are identifying a network of brain regions specifically and interconnectedly implicated in estrogens' and ER's very rapid effects on various learning tasks.
 

 

We look forward to seeing you at todays talk. 

Regards

 

Sandra

 

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on behalf of... 

Kathryn M Murphy PhD

Professor and Director MiNDS Graduate Program

Dept of Psychology Neuroscience & Behaviour

McMaster University

1280 Main St W 

Hamilton ON L8S 4K1