Amy Griffin
Amy Griffin
Office location
University of Delaware, 105 The Green, Room 113, Wolf Hall, Newark, DE 19716
Lab
302-831-4895 / Wolf Hall, Room 147
Education
- Ph.D. – Miami University
- M.A. – Miami University
- B.A. – Baldwin-Wallace College
Biography
Amy Griffin, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. She received her Ph.D. in 2003 from Miami University, where she studied neural activity patterns underlying rabbit classical conditioning under the direction of Stephen Berry.
For her post-doctoral work, Griffin had a joint appointment in the laboratories of Michael Hasselmo and Howard Eichenbaum in the Center for Memory and Brain at Boston University recording populations of single hippocampal neurons during memory task performance in rats, supported through an NRSA postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Mental Health.
In 2007, Dr. Griffin joined the University of Delaware Psychology Department. The focus of her research program is exploring the neural mechanisms of memory using two main approaches: investigating the effects of discrete brain region inactivation on memory task performance and the recording of populations of single neurons in freely moving rats during memory tasks. Together, these approaches are aimed at discovering the neural mechanisms driving memory-guided behavior.
Courses Regularly Taught
NSCI627: Advanced Neurophysiology
NSCI629: Integrative Neuroscience I
NSCI402: Mindfulness and the Brain
Research Projects
Area: Behavioral neuroscience
The guiding hypothesis of the current project is that hippocampal-prefrontal oscillatory synchrony is regulated by the anterior midline thalamic nucleus reuniens (RE). We are using a combination of electrophysiological methods, bidirectional optogenetic manipulation of neuronal excitation, and behavior to investigate the role of RE activity in HC-PFC synchrony and working memory performance.
