Spotlights on Schneiderman Fellows
We would like to introduce you to the 2024-25 Fellows of the Howard Schneiderman Training Program in Learning and Memory and celebrate the accomplishments of all of our current and past Fellows. This year, the program will fund 5 doctoral students whose work spans a wide range of approaches and techniques.
Meet Paula Assakura Miyazaki
Paula Assakura Miyazaki is a PhD student training under the mentorship of Dr. Norbert Fortin. Research in the The Fortin Lab investigates how the brain supports the ability to temporally organize memories and how this is affected in cognitive disorders, using inactivation and high-density electrophysiology in rats performing human-comparable memory tasks.
Meet Matthew Sandoval
Matthew Sandoval is a PhD student training under the mentorship of Dr. Javier Díaz Alonzo. Research in the Díaz-Alonso Lab investigates how synapses are dynamically organized to support transmission and plasticity, focusing on the glutamatergic and endocannabinoid systems and using molecular, electrophysiological, imaging, and behavioral techniques to uncover the synaptic mechanisms underlying learning, memory, and brain disorders.
Meet Jasmin Hernandez Santacruz
Jasmin Hernandez Santacruz is a PhD student training under the mentorship of Dr. Judith Kroll. Research in the Kroll Lab uses behavioral and neuroscience methods to investigate how bilinguals control two simultaneously active languages, revealing that cross-language interactions can reshape both the native and second language and enhance domain-general cognitive control.
Meet Ari Khoudary
Ari Khoudary is a PhD student training under the mentorship of Dr. Aaron Bornstein and Dr. Megan Peters. Research in the Bornstein and Peters Lab studies how humans use past experiences to guide adaptive behavior, combining computational modeling, behavioral experiments, and neuroimaging to investigate the interplay between memory, perception, decision-making, and metacognition.
The Howard Schneiderman Training Program in Learning and Memory at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory is a NIMH funded T32 predoctoral training program that is supplemented with a private endowment named in honor of Dr. Howard Schneiderman (1927-1990), former Dean of Biological Sciences at UC Irvine and a major driving force in building the School in its early days. The training program is directed by Drs. Michael Yassa and Bruce McNaughton.