Congratulations to PhD student Tatiyana Kubrynski (formerly Adkins), who received a Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA F31 predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Tatiyana's project asks how early-life stress shapes the development and function of the insula, and how those...
Tatiyana Kubrynski (formerly Adkins) sat down with LifeCanvas Technologies to talk about her recent Journal of Neuroscience paper, which shows that input from somatosensory cortex to the insula plays distinct roles in alcohol drinking and aversive behavior in mice. Read the interview | Read the paper...
Tatiyana Adkins's paper showing that input from somatosensory cortex to the insula plays distinct roles in alcohol drinking and aversive behavior was selected as a featured article in the Journal of Neuroscience, and an image from the study was chosen for the issue cover. Congratulations,...
The lab received a Translational Research Pilot Award from the Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), co-funded by the Cardiovascular Sciences Center and the Hypertension and Vascular Research Center. The project, Cardiac Autonomic Function and Mid-Insula Circuit Dysregulation in Traumatic Stress, brings together...
The lab has received a five-year R01 grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). The project asks why some people progress from casual drinking to alcohol use disorder while others do not. Using preclinical models, we will examine how stress and...
Congratulations to PhD student Aditi Buch, who received a Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA F31 predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Aditi's dissertation asks how traumatic stress changes drinking through a stress-activated pathway from the basolateral amygdala to the insula....
Dr. Sam Centanni received the 2025 PhD Mentor Award from the Wake Forest Neuroscience Graduate Program. The award is voted on by the Neuroscience Graduate Program PhD students. It follows the 2023 MS Mentor of the Year Award from the same program. Thank you to...
Congratulations to PhD student Ben Williams, who received a Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA F31 predoctoral fellowship from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Ben's project examines how α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors on insula to BNST projection neurons shape alcohol drinking. Way to...
Dr. Sam Centanni received the 2024 Daryl and Marguerite Errett Discovery Award in Biomedical Research from the Errett Fisher Foundation. The award supports one project each year with strong potential for transformative discoveries in mental health. The project examines how insula stress circuitry and stress...
Dr. Sam Centanni received a 3 year, $300,000 grant from the prestigious Whitehall Foundation to study the neurocircuits driving stress response. Click here to read more about this project....