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Human Development Initiative
| The Human Development Initiative is a community of scholars throughout the university interested in development across the lifespan. The initiative is focused on cutting-edge research involving genetics, neuroscience, and psychosocial development and how these different factors intersect. |
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MSU Rhythms Research Group
| The Rhythms Research Group at Michigan State University is a collection of Neuroscientists who share research interests, lab equipment and techniques. Members of the group benefit from their frequent interations and close collaborations. Our research focuses on the processes and mechanisms of biological rhythms of mammals. |
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The Breedlove Jordan Lab
| We are interested in hormonal modulation of the developing and adult nervous system that leads to changes in behavior. Steroid hormones such as testosterone can alter the survival and differentiation of glia, neurons and target tissues such as muscle. Using a range of rodent species, we try to understand which cells directly respond to the hormone, which genes are regulated in those cells, and how the structure and function of the cell changes as a consequence of that gene regulation. |
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The Sisk Lab
| The common theme of research projects in the Sisk Lab is the influence of steroid hormones on nervous system structure and function. Gonadal steroids, such as testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone, profoundly affect neuronal activity, connectivity within neural circuits, and behavior at different stages of life, including early neural development, puberty, and in adulthood. Neural and behavioral responses to steroid hormones vary with developmental stage. Our work focuses on the role of pubertal hormones in shaping development of the adolescent brain and maturation of adult behaviors, and it contributes to an understanding of the ways and extent to which the capacity for functional plasticity within the nervous system changes across the lifespan. Research in the Sisk Lab is a combination of neuroendocrinology, developmental neurobiology, and behavioral neuroscience. We employ a variety of experimental techniques, ranging from analysis of gene expression to analysis of behavior. |
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The Wade Lab
| We seek to understand how structural and biochemical changes within the central nervous system regulate behavior. One effective method for investigating this topic is the exploitation of naturally occurring differences in behaviors. We study courtship and copulatory displays because they are stereotyped, sexually differentiated, and in many species displayed seasonally. Therefore, we can evaluate mechanisms regulating behaviors within a sex in and out of the breeding season, as well as between the two sexes. We focus on factors involved both in organizing critical regions of the brain, spinal cord and muscles during development, as well as those that confer varying levels of plasticity in adulthood. Members of my lab are working with two model systems, zebra finches and green anole lizards. These species have the potential to not only increase understanding of the evolution of the processes regulating behavioral differences, which have commonly been studied in mammals, but also to address the ubiquity of the mechanisms employed in diverse situations. |
