Dave obtained his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and currently holds a full time teaching and research position at Concordia University's center of behavioural neurobiology. Dave's area of research is cognitive and behavioural neuroscience, with a focus on memory systems.

Nicole completed her Master’s thesis in an Anxiety Disorders laboratory, under the supervision of Dr. Michel Dugas. She joined the Mumby lab in September 2008 and began her doctoral work the following year. Currently, she has three lines of research:1) Effects of dorsolateral entorhinal cortex lesions on spatial memory, 2) role of acetylcholine in the perirhinal cortex on object recognition memory, and 3) modulatory effect of estrogen in the perirhinal cortex on object recognition in female rats (in collaboration with Dr. Wayne Brake). In addition to her doctoral work, Nicole is involved in ongoing collaborative projects with Dr. Matthew Holahan’s lab at Carleton University. Click HERE to learn more about the collaborative projects.

Dan graduated with a BSc degree in Psychology from Carleton University in 2008, where he worked under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Holahan. His undergraduate thesis focused on the effects of ghrelin on learning and memory. He continued his studies in Dr. Holahan's lab throughout his Master's degree (Neuroscience), looking at the effects of DNA dopaminergic aptamers on learning and memory. Dan started his PhD studies in 2010 at Concordia's CSBN in Montreal, under the joint supervision of Dr. Mumby and Dr. Brake. His projects revolve around the effects of estrogen and antipsychotics on cognitive performance in rats.

Anastasia completed her Master’s degree at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Fred Colbourne. Her master’s thesis investigated the effects of a western diet (high in saturated fatty acids) on stroke severity and functional outcome following 8-minutes of forebrain ischemia in rats. Briefly, she found that a western diet did not potentiate hippocampal CA1 cell necrosis and spatial learning and memory impairments following forebrain ischemia in rats. Anastasia began her Ph.D. in the fall of 2009 under the supervision of Dr. Dave Mumby. Her doctoral work focuses on the effects of lesions to the lateral internal medullary lamina (IML) of the thalamus on rats performance on both spatial and non-spatial tests of memory.

Sofia is finishing her third year of a B.Sc Honours in Psychology (behavioural neuroscience). She joined the lab in January 2011 as a volunteer and since May of that year, has been working as a research assistant. Her main task includes running behavioural procedures (fixed platform place navigation task, delayed non-matching to place task, delayed non-match to sample task, and novel object preference task). She is also actively involved in data analysis, training incoming students, infusion procedures, tissue preparation, immunohistochemistry, and various surgical procedures. Currently, Sofia is involved in an investigation of the role of 17-beta estradiol in the perirhinal cortex on two object recognition memory tasks (DNMS and NOP), as well as studying the effect of entorhinal cortex lesions on spatial memory. Sofia’s Honours project, which begins in September 2012, will investigate the modulatory effects of 17-beta estradiol in contextual and cued fear conditioning. She is also interested in examining whether 17-beta estradiol differentially modulates dorsal and ventral hippocampal activation following re-exposure to either the context or cue.

Monyka has been volunteering in the Mumby lab since May 2011. Since joining the lab, she has assisted in exposing animals to environmental enrichment, assessing rats' object preferences in an open field arena, and coding animal behaviour. She is currently assissting in collecting behavioural data on a new delayed nonmatching-to-sample task using the circular track apparatus.

Sarah is in her second year of a B.Sc. honours in psychology. She joined the lab as a volunteer in October 2011. Since joining the lab, she has been assisting in collecting behavioural data on several experiments designed to assess rats' object recognition memory. More recently, she has been learning to perform various histological techniques. Sarah is currently using the circular track apparatus to assess rats' performance on a new delayed nonmatching-to-sample task.

Stephane obtained his Master's degree from Concordia University in Montreal while under the supervision of Dr. Dave Mumby. During that time, he studied the effects of hippocampal damage, specifically global cerebral ischemia and hippocampal lesions, on spatial memory and object recognition memory (anterograde and retrograde) in rats. His Ph.D. thesis was supervised by Dr. Norman White at McGill University. His research focused on the role of the hippocampus, fimbria-fornix, entorhinal cortex and amygdala in reinforced and unreinforced spatial learning in rats. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD). There, he studied retrograde amnesia for spatial and object-recognition memory in rats following hippocampal lesions, while under the supervision of Drs. Larry Squire and Robert Clark. During his postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Mumby's lab, his research focus was on the role the hippocampus and related structures such as, the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices, play on the acquisition and consolidation of spatial and non-spatial memories in rats. He attempted to establish this relationship through lesions and temporary inactivation methods. He found that the consolidation of spatial memories may be detected if the behavioural test used is non-navigational and if a range of behaviours are measured. Dr. Gaskin is currently an assistant professor at Concordia University. Click HERE to learn more about Dr. Gaskin's research.

Melissa Glenn received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Experimental Psychology from Concordia University in 1997 and 2003, respectively. Her graduate theses focused on the functional neuroanatomy of memory systems. In her Master’s research she demonstrated a double dissociation of function between the contributions of the perirhinal cortex and the hippocampus to normal object recognition memory and spatial memory. Her Ph.D. research was a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the role of the perirhinal cortex in anterograde and retrograde memories for objects and places and probed the outcomes of different methodologies for conducting behavioural tests and producing experimental brain lesions. From 2003 until 2007, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University and while there was funded by the National Institute on Aging to study the neural and behavioural mechanisms mediating a lifelong enhancement in cognition with prenatal choline supplementation. She joined the Psychology Department at Colby College in August 2007 where she is continuing to ask questions about the behavioural, neural, and physiological effects of choline supplementation or deficiency at different stages of life. Currently, her lab is investigating the role of diet and other environmental factors in mediating risk for and prognosis with a variety of psychological and stress-linked disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Click HERE to learn more about Dr. Glenn's research.

Hugo completed his Master’s degree at the University of Alberta and then continued on to his Ph.D. at Concordia University under the supervision of Dr. Mumby. Dr. Lehmann worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Lethbridge under the supervision of Dr. Rob Sutherland. He now holds a faculty position at Trent University (Ontario). Click HERE to learn more about Dr. Lehmann's research.

Carla began her Master’s degree in September 2005. Her thesis involved a series of experiments on the social transmission of food preferences in rats interacting in complex environments. Initial results suggested that following a 30 minute interaction between a recently fed demonstrator rat and several observer rats, observer rats preferred that food which their demonstrator consumed in a two-choice novel diet preference test 10 minutes post interaction. This same brief exposure, under current protocol failed to promote a preference in observer rats 24 hours post interaction. Further analysis of the results failed to find a correlation between the amount of time rats spend in nose to nose contact with the demonstrator rat and the magnitude of their preference post interaction. Carla graduated in the fall 2008 and is currently teaching at Vanier College.

The goal of Pavel's thesis work was to investigate whether pharmacological attenuation of epileptiform activity in the hippocampus following stroke (transient global cerebral ischemia) reduces behavioural (allocentric spatial working memory) and electrophysiological (long-term potentiation induction) impairments in rats. Besides his thesis work, Pavel conducted experiments aimed to describe incidence and severity of post-ischemic seizures and whether seizure activity was related to the object-recognition deficits that follow ischemia. From May 2007 to September 2008 he had the privilege of working on a large scale stroke study with a team of 8 lab members, 6 behavioural tasks, and multiple histological assessments. In addition to ischemia research, he was involved in a series of behavioural studies investigating how various factors (e.g., contextual information, dishabituation) contribute to performance on the novel-object preference test, a popular method used to assess object-recognition in rats.

For Carl's Master's thesis project he assessed the effects of age and ischemia on object recognition memory and spatial memory.

Norm obtained his Bachelors from McGill University before coming to our lab to work on his Masters. His project involved characterizing the range and development of memory impairments following transient global ischemia. He tested rats on a variety of behavioural tasks to assess memory for qualitatively different types of information two weeks, two months and six months following ischemia. In addition, he was examining whether these memory impairments may be associated with neuropathology outside of the hippocampus by looking for changes in the expression of GFAP and MAP-2 in structures implicated in different memory abilities. Norm is currently pursuing his graduate studies in Counselling Psychology at McGill University.

Marilyn joined Dave Mumby’s lab in September 2007. She was training in Dr. Mumby’s lab as a research technician and acquired numerous skills. She worked on a project that involved the behavioural and histological assessment of rats subjected to global-cerebral-ischemia (GCI). For this project she performed the immunohistological procedures necessary to detect glial-fibrillary-acidic-protein (GFAP) and microtubule-associated-protein (MAP 2). She also performed the stereotaxic surgeries and behavioural testing for several experiments that focused on the effects of hippocampal lesions on spatial and non-spatial memory tasks. She also worked on a project that focused on whether injections of muscimol (a GABAa agonist) into the dorsal hippocampus provide neuronal protection during GCI. 

Cynthia joined the lab in June 2008 and volunteered throughout the summer analyzing behavioural data and performing various histological procedures. In the fall 2008, she started her undergraduate thesis under the supervision of Dr. Dave Mumby. Her undergraduate thesis involved assessing the effects of hippocampal inactivation during ischemia on allocentric spatial memory. Cynthia continued volunteering in the lab until she completed her bachelor of science in psychology specialization neuroscience in spring 2010. During that time she worked on various experiments with Dr. Gaskin assessing spatial memory. Cynthia is currently studying at St. Matthew's Univeristy School of Medicine.

Sophie joined the Mumby lab as a volunteer in January 2010, and stayed with us throughout the summer of 2010 as a NSERC USRA (undergraduate summer research award) recipient. Sophie completed her Honours thesis project in the lab during the 2010-2011 academic year. Her experiment looked at the effects of global cerebral ischemia on object-recognition memory using the NOP test, and as was done in a previous study (Mumby et al., 1996), she compared ischemic rats with others that received hippocampal aspirations, either alone or together with the ischemia. Results were inconclusive, but it was excellent work, nonetheless. During summer 2011, Sophie was once again a recipient of another NSERC USRA. She collected behavioural data for a new object recognition memory task.

Jessica joined the lab in the fall of 2009 as a volunteer. During the summer of 2010, she worked as a research assistant in the lab and was primarily involved in an environmental enrichment study. For her Honours thesis, Jessica investigated whether infusing compound SKF 96365 into the medial entorhinal cortex of rats would result in working memory impairments. This compound has been shown to block persistent firing of neurons and it is therefore hypothesized that rats will be impaired on working memory tasks after being infused with it. In the experiment, the Delayed-Matching-To-Place task was used in order to assess working memory.

Sara-Claude completed both her Psyc311 project and Honours thesis in the lab. For her Psyc311 project, she assessed changes in evoked neocortical spindles during the learning of a skilled-forelimb reaching task. For her Honours thesis, she investigated the effects of transient global cerebral ischemia on circadian rhythmicity. She then applied her many skills as a valued technician in the lab. Since September 2007, Sara-Claude has been pursuing her graduate studies at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Val completed both her Honours thesis and 311 project in the lab.  In her 311 project she found that hippocampal lesions impaired performance on a retrograde memory task using the shock-probe apparatus. The results of her honours thesis provided evidence that environmental enrichment can reduce behavioural variability on some behavioural tasks used to assess memory. She then worked for three consecutive years as an NSERC summer research assistant.

Stephanie completed her 311 project in the lab as well as her Honours thesis. In her 311 project she found that hippocampal lesions impaired avoidance but not the burying of a previously encountered aversive stimulus. Her Honours thesis examined the effect of hippocampal lesions on recognition memory when there are contextual changes.

Lima received the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award in the summer of 2008. She was involved in various aspects of the lab. One of her responsibilities included testing rats on a NOP task and collecting the behavioural data. She was also involved in various histological procedures, specifically conducting density counts on sections stained for glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP).

Hibba was an undergraduate exchange student from the University of Osnabrueck in Germany. She was enrolled in the Psychology program at Concordia when she joined the lab as a volunteer. She was involved in the immunohistochemistry component of an extensive ischemia project in the lab in which she took part in the sectioning, staining and mounting of tissue. Specifically, she performed the IHC staining for GFAP and MAP2 and also stained sections with cresyl violet acetate. Hibba recently received a MSc in Neuroscience at King's College in London. She is currently studying at McGill University.