An article describing our recent NSF award was published in Nevada Today. What can an insect’s sense of smell tell us about the neuroscience of decision-making?

We are pleased to announce that the Mathew Lab received a new 4-year NSF-IOS grant award with a start date of July 15, 2024! The award’s title is: Investigating how hunger shapes olfactory decision-making in insects. Congratulations to all Mathew Lab Team members whose efforts resulted in this grant award for the lab. You can read more about the award HERE.

Emma Stauffenberg presented an excellent poster at SfN 2024 in Chicago, IL. Emma’s primary goal in the Mathew Lab was to ask whether insulin signaling is necessary and sufficient to mediate hunger-dependent changes in larval decision-making. She has already optimized a MATLAB-based tracking software to carefully identify and quantify larval head-sweeps during locomotion. Because of Emma’s efforts, we can now measure even small changes in head-sweep magnitudes and confidently assess the necessity and sufficiency of insulin signaling in modulating head-sweep behavior.