Academic Research
I have been lucky to be involved in different research projects. For a brief description, check the sections below. You can also find my publications in Google Scholar.
Hunger & sleep Interactions
My current research involves understanding the interactions between hunger and sleep circuits.
Maternal Behavior
During my time in the University of Massachusetts Amherst I studied maternal behavior in rats. I learned several new techniques and had my first experience working with rodents (actually switched from invertebrates to vertebrates!).
This work materialized in my MSc. thesis: Mapping a pup-resposive pathway from medial preoptic area to ventral tegmental area.
Learning and Memory
Learning in Crabs
In Argentina, my research was focused in Contextual Pavlovian Conditioning of the crab Neohelice granulata. The original paradigm was thoroughly described by Fustiñana et al., 2013. We were able to expand this paradigm and unveil new unexpected long-term memories. Working in the Neurobiology of the Memory Lab has been a fulfilling experience. My research was materialized in my graduation thesis and a subsecuent publication.
Social Deficits
A subset of children with autism spectrum disorder appear to show an improvement in their behavioural symptoms during the course of a fever. I have been fortunate to integrate a team studying the effects of the inflammatory response (mainly the role of Interleukin 17a) in mouse models of social deficits.
Our work was published as IL-17a promotes sociability in mouse models of neurodevelopmental disorders