Cassandra Weaver

Featured Researcher:

Cassandra Weaver

Program: Beckman 2003-05
School: CAS '05
Major/Minor: Biology (Neuroscience)/Italian
Advisor: Mary Erskine , CAS, Professor, Biology

Inspiration

Throughout my years as a student I have always loved learning about new advances in science and technology. In high school I decided that I wanted to have a role in making these new discoveries and began reading about current research in the field of biology. After coming to Boston University I learned about the Beckman Scholars program. I knew that it would be an excellent opportunity for me learn more about research and provide an ideal way to begin my career as a research scientist.

Research:
My research deals with how stimulus and behavior affect neural activity. Using a female rat model, I am seeking to determine how specific areas of the rat’s brain process and store the stimulus of mating. Mating initiates a series of neural signals that travel up the spinal cord to the amygdala, hypothalamus, and finally to the pituitary, where they incites prolactin (PRL) surges that facilitate pregnancy. Since the PRL release continues for up to two weeks after the stimulus is received, the brain must have a mechanism to store this information. Furthermore, female rats are able to control the amount of time between each intromission so as to increase their chances of pregnancy. This paced mating requires that the females remember the mating stimuli. My project is to learn how this memory mechanism works.

I will begin by studying the process by which neurons in the amygdala are activated by mating stimuli. NMDA receptors in these neurons are activated by the neurotransmitter, glutamate. It has been found that estrogen positively influences this activation, making it probable that the neurons involved contain both estrogen receptors and NMDA receptors. I hope to determine if this is true and then to continue to study the following steps in the sequence that leads to storage of the mating stimulus.