Research Areas by Faculty
Search Faculty
Our department houses some of the top researchers in the their field. There are many opportunities for students to get involved in research. Use the Search below to browse research areas by FacultyI may still accept a few undergraduate students for W26 and beyond.
In the lab we value diversity and we welcome applications from underrepresented groups, including women, people with disabilities, aboriginal people, visible minorities, and 2SLGBTQ+.
Research in the lab involves investigations into the neurotransmitters and hormonal underpinnings of social and cognitive behavior in rodents.
We are particularly interested in various regulatory and modulatory aspects of social behavior. Among many, we are investigating the neurobiological bases of (1) social learning (learning from others) whereby an individual acquires information from another individual, (2) social recognition (learning about others), individual identification and memory (3) sociability, an individual's tendency to prefer to spend time with social vs non social stimuli, and (3) agonistic interactions in males and females. Our research involves small rodents, mainly mice and it involves an integration of various aspects of neuroscience from Ethological to Pharmacological, Molecular and Genetic. Naturalistic behavioral models as well as an evolutionary interpretation of results are pivotal factors in our research. The involvement of acetylcholine, dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, and the sex hormones in the social transmission of food preferences and social recognition are, at present, the main focus of our research. We are identifying the networks of brain regions where hormones/neurochemicals interplay to underline social cognitive skills. To this aim, we employ behavioral, surgical, and molecular biology methods to pharmacologically manipulate these systems in specific brain regions.
Other projects are also on going in the lab, in collaboration with other labs at Guelph as well as in other Universities, both in Canada (Mac Master, University of Western Ontario) and abroad (The Rockefeller University, NY; Universita' di Parma, Italy; and King's College, London, UK).
The research in our lab of neuroendocrinology of social behavior is conducted by several very cool graduate students and numerous undergraduate students who join their projects.
Current (2024) PhD students
Kelsy Ervin, MSc
Pietro Paletta, MSc
Current (2024) MSc students
Anjana Varatharajah
Samantha McGuinness
Charlotte Larochelle-Compton
Past graduate students
Amy Clipperton-Allen, MA in 2007 and PhD in 2011
Anna Phan, MSc in 2008 and PhD in 2013
Jennifer Lymer, PhD in 2015
Richard Matta, MSc in 2014 and PhD in 2018
Paul Sheppard, PhD in 2018
Noah Bass, MSc in 2019 and PhD in 2023
Dario Aspesi, PhD in 2023
Darryl Bannon, MA in 2009
Christopher Gabor, MSc in 2013
Daniel Palmer, MSc in 2013
Colin Howes, MSc in 2016
Cameron Wasson, MSc in 2017
Theresa Martin, MSc in 2018
Talya Kuun, MSc in 2021
Emily Martin, MSc in 2021
Yamna Rizwan, MSc in 2021
Oksana Kachmarchuk, MSc in 2021
Christine Sexton, MSc in 2022
Siyao Peng, MSc in 2023
Kathleen Ladouceur, MSc in 2024
Dante Cantini, MSc in 2024
Past Post Doctoral Fellows
Riccardo Dore, Ph.D., 2010-2011
Caitlin O'Flynn, Ph.D., 2016
Past Lab Technicians
Marian Castro-Labrada, MSc, 2015
Michael Marcotte, MSc, 2016-2017
Accepting New Experiential Learning Students: Yes
My group investigates the neurobiology of cognition, with an emphasis on learning and memory. Topics of interest include memory acquisition, consolidation, and reconsolidation in rats and mice, as well as cognitive testing in rodent models of human disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.
Accepting New Experiential Learning Students: No