Antonieta Lavin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor Department of Physiology & Neuroscience,
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC.

Phone: (843) 792-6799
Fax: (843) 792-4423
Email: lavina@musc.edu

Research Interests:

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and schizophrenia are neuropsychiatric disorders that affect young individuals. Among other characteristics, a disruption in a specific type of memory, the so-called working memory and an increase in impulsivity prevails in these disorders. My laboratory is interested in study the cellular mechanisms that underlie working memory and the effects of monoamines in the cellular expression of working memory: Up states. We use elctrophysiological techniques (intracellular recordings in anesthetized rats, whole-cell clamp and voltage-clamp in acute slices and organotypic cultures) in order to elucidate how specific monoaminergic agonist or antagonist modulate Up states and thus how these drugs could affect working memory and impulsivity performances.

Selected Recent Publications:

Lavin, A. Effects of acute amphetamine in the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus: Possible relevance for psychiatric disorders. Thalamus and Related Systems, 1-4 pp 379-386, 2002.

H. Trantham, K. K. Szumlinski, K. McFarland, P. W. Kalivas and A. Lavin Repeated cocaine administration alters the electrophysiological properties of prefrontal cortical neurons. Neuroscience 113, pp749-753, 2002.

Seamans, J.K., Nogueira, L. and Lavin, A. synaptic basis of persistent activity in prefrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, In Press 2003.

Lavin, A. Glutamate/Monoamine Interactions in the Limbic Thalamus. Glutamate and Disorders of Cognition and Motivation, Volume 1003 of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, edited by Bita Moghaddam and Marina E. Wolf. 2003.