Heard on Campus: Nikki Crowley on 30 years of neuroscience advances at Penn State
“In the next 30 years I hope we find solutions for neurological diseases, gain an understanding of what physiological flourishing looks like, and solve major questions to help improve human health,” said Nikki Crowley the Huck Early Career Chair in Neurobiology and Neural Engineering, the Associate Director for Postdoctoral Training and Leadership in the Center for Neural Engineering, and an assistant professor of biology, biomedical engineering, and pharmacology. Crowley recently spoke at the Ashtekar Frontiers of Science, an annual public lecture series held by the Eberly College of Science, on 30 years of advances in cell signaling and neuroscience.
In her presentation, Crowley described past, present, and future work in a talk titled “Signaling between Cells in the Brain: Bridging the Past and Present of Neuroscience at Penn State with New Tools and New Questions.” Crowley highlighted her laboratory’s discovery-based science approach to answering questions about how signaling in the brain is related to risk-taking behavior. Specifically, Crowley studies the role of somatostatin, a neuropeptide, in decision-making and risk-taking.
“Somatostatin dampens the activity of cortical outputs that promote risk, which my laboratory has found reduces binge drinking in an animal model,” Crowley said. “This finding has been complemented by human data to validate our assumptions.”
Beyond the role of somatostatin in risk-taking, Crowley has also explored the impact of adolescent binge drinking on anxiety later in life in animal models. Her lab has found sex differences in adults after binge drinking in their youth, she explained.
“Problems like adolescent binge drinking can have long-term consequences so future technologies are being used here at Penn State and at collaborating institutions to help reverse the effects or lessen the impact of these actions,” Crowley said.
In addition to highlighting her own work, Crowley also shared numerous recent advances being led by fellow Penn State neuroscience research faculty.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Ashtekar Frontiers of Science Lecture series. To celebrate this occasion, this year’s series looks back at past topics, including having updates from some speakers, as well as looking ahead to the new advancements and prospects of the impactful research in the Eberly College of Science and across Penn State.
Crowley was introduced by Andy Ewing, a professor at Penn State from 1984 to 2012. In 1998, the theme of the lecture series was, “The Human Brain and the Human Mind,” and Ewing gave a lecture titled "Signaling Between Cells in the Brain.”
There are three lectures remaining in this year’s series. On Feb. 17, Richard Alley and Charles Anderson will present “Finding the Good News on Climate and Energy", on Feb. 24, Morteza Kayyalha and Nitin Samarth will present “Going Beyond Classical Computers", and finally on Mar. 2, Gabriela González and Abhay Ashtekar will present “Einstein, Gravitational Waves, Black Holes and Other Matters.”