Neuroscience graduate student Tariq Brown and Dr. Karla Kaun were highlighted in News from Brown today!
Alcohol, a laser light show, laughter and good times: on any given afternoon, there’s a party going on in the neuroscience lab of Associate Professor Karla Kaun — a research party, that is. The alcohol is exclusively for the fruit flies through which Kaun and her team are studying how addictive substances interfere with memory circuits. The colored lasers come from the sophisticated imaging tools that the researchers use to look at different proteins in the flies’ brains. The team of researchers is advancing breakthrough discoveries about the molecular basis of cravings, which can inform the study of how humans respond to addictive substances. In this photo, graduate student Tariq Brown demonstrates how alcohol impacts the activity of memory circuits in the fruit fly brain using genetic calcium sensors imaged with two-photon microscopy. “We were particularly excited because Tariq showed me the difference between alcohol alone and alcohol with a sensory cue,” Kaun said. “This is important because it showed how alcohol is impacting sensory experiences to form really long-lasting memories of a sensory cue.”
Photo by Nick Dentamaro.
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