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Welcome!

I am a faculty member in the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience and Developmental Science training programs in the Departments of Psychology and Biology at the University of Iowa. I am currently also Editor-in-Chief of the APA journal, Behavioral Neuroscience, a member of the Delta Center, and a Past-President of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology. Here you will find links to my lab and the people who work there, a description of our current research, and recent books and journal articles. There is also information for prospective graduate students and postdocs.

Sleep --- particularly its development, functions, and neural control --- is the current focus of our research. It is curious that although sleep occupies most of our time when we are infants, the vast majority of sleep research focuses on adults. One overriding reason for this odd imbalance is simply the difficulty of working with infants. We have overcome this problem by developing novel techniques that allow us to probe the neural and physiological mechanisms that modulate infant behavior. Using such techniques, we are now able to investigate sleep during a time when it is prominent and changing rapidly.

POSTDOCTORAL and GRADUATE STUDENT positions available.

 

Recent Publications

Tiriac et al. Rapid whisker movements in sleeping newborn rats. Current Biology, 2012. link pdf

Todd et al. Distinct retinohypothalamic innervation patterns predict the developmental emergence of species-typical circadian preference in nocturnal Norway rats and diurnal Nile grass rats. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 2012. pdf

Gall et al. Development of SCN connectivity and the circadian control of arousal: A diminishing role for humoral factors. PLoS ONE, 2012. pdf

Freaks of Nature

What Anomalies
Tell Us About
Development and Evolution

read more...

The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience

read more...

   

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