Collin Prill presents at the Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium

In April, Collin presented a poster on his honors thesis project, “The Contributions of GABAergic Neurons in the Ventral Pallidum to Food Reward Consumption” at the University of Minnesota’s Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium. Collin worked with Alexandra Scott, a graduate student in the lab, to investigate the impact of inhibition of activation of GABAergic neurons in the ventral pallidum on consumption of sucrose or rat chow. He used designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (aka DREADDs) to target this cell type specifically. Interestingly he found that activation of these neurons potentiated by sucrose and rat chow consumption, but that this effect only occurred in male rats. Great work, Collin!