Leting Zhang (张乐婷)

Leting Zhang (张乐婷)

Assitant Professor @Lerner College, UDel

Host CNLM Panel ‘How Addiction Hijacks the Brain’

1 minute read

Published:

This evening, I hosted the CNLM ambassador’s panel “How Addiction Hijacks the Brain: What Animal Models Can Tell Us About the Neurobiology of Drugs of Abuse”. This panel features four UCI addiction experts Dr. Christie Fowler, Dr. Ariana Nelson, Dr. Jessica Childs, and PhD candidate Mitchell Farrell. This is the second panel hosted by CNLM Adult Outreach Committee and we have over 60 attendees from the Irvine community. Although the audience size in summer is smaller than during the school year, I really enjoyed facilitating the panel discussion, learned about neural mechanisms underlying drug addiction, and was deeply inspired by scientists who are determined to devote their lifelong career to improving people’s mental health.

Learning from our last panel on “sleep and mental health”, we improved question organization and changed our free-answer question mode to a semi-directed question style. The semi-directed question mode seems to work more effectively this time as we managed to go over many questions within the 1.5 hour. This hosting experience is also a great learning process for me. I gained a new perspective in thinking about academic activities: how to get involved in a discussion while I am not a scientist in that specific sub-discipline (my field is spatial neuroscience, which is very different from drug abuse).

This experience also boosted my knowledge back-up as a teacher. Interestingly, just around two weeks ago, I gave a mini-lecture in my Psychology Fundamental class on how to use classical conditioning to explain why people got overdose easily in a new environment. I will have more to share with my students in the future if I were to teach related topic again. How nice :)

All panelists, organizers, and moderators

Here are some relevant resources:

SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357) https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline

Quit smoking: https://smokefree.gov

Prevent Overdose on Opioids - Naloxone for All: https://www.naloxoneforall.org

Suicide Prevention Hotline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Alcoholics Anonymous Orange County: https://oc-aa.org

You May Also Enjoy

Present at OHBM 2021

less than 1 minute read

Published:

Today, I presented my work on head direction signals in the human brain at this year’s annual meeting of the organization for human brain mapping (OHBM). The conference focuses on understanding the organization of the human brain using neuroimaging methods. At this conference, I learned about new fMRI data analyses methods and different perspectives on open science and publishing.

Present at spatial@ucsb.global2021: Spatial Data Science for a Sustainable Future

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This afternoon, I gave a poster presentation of my latest findings of head direction signals in the human brain at spatial@ucsb.global2021 - the annual spatial conference hosted by the Spatial Center at UC Santa Barbara with a topic on “Spatial Data Science for a Sustainable Future”. I’m glad to share my fresh research findings with my UCSB colleagues in both geography and psychology.

Present at Virtual Spring CNLM Conference - Memory: It’s About Time

less than 1 minute read

Published:

Today, I gave a short talk on “head direction signals during navigation” at this year’s Virtual Spring CNLM Conference with the topic “Memory: It’s About Time”. My talk took place in one of the data blitz sessions entitled “Memory Matters: Studies Examining Human Memory”. It was great to learn about the cutting-edge research from neuroscientists across the U.S. with a focus on learning and memory.