Bradly Stone

Website: linkedin.com/in/bradly-stone-phd

My Departments/Programs
Neuroscience PhD Program
Quantitative Biology (QB) Interdisciplinary Program

Contact Info
bradly.stone@tufts.edu
781-736-3221

Degrees
University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), B.S. Biopsychology

Brandeis University, PhD Neuroscience


Current research interests

Currently Bradly is a postdoctoral scholar at Tufts Medical University in Jamie Maguire's lab where he is investigating the role of state-modulated behaviors through examining how stressors during development alter the signaling cascades in regions (i.e. ventral tegmental area, basolateral amygdala, and medial prefrontal cortex) known to regulate motivated behaviors. He utilizes in vivo optogenetics, electrophysiology, and imaging techniques aimed at establishing a model for how psychiatric disorders, such as substance use disorders, may emerge through improper engagement of network communication.

Graduate research interests

Drawing on what associations were made with a stimulus, how these associations occurred, and the strengths thereof, highlights the intricate challenge in researching the effect that a stimulus has on behavioral responses and time of associative decay. These contexts are known to shape the memories surrounding a stimulus and serve as a guide in discerning whether an object should be avoided or approached in the future. Moreover, these associations are not static and can be changed through plasticity mechanisms. Stratifying characteristics about how varying internal body states (e.g. sickness) affect these responses enables the exploration of how state changes can impact behavior at a neural level.

I am interested in investigating how body states influence gustatory processing through innate mechanisms. My research aims to collect and analyze single cell recordings and local field potentials (LFPs) from the gustatory cortex (GC) and basal lateral amygdala (BLA) to describe cortical changes that are unique to background states and how manipulation of said states can affect sensory network patterns. Preliminary data have validated the capabilities of our lab's electrophysiological techniques and behavioral paradigms in isolating cortical signals from within the GC (Ferretti, Schwint, & Katz, 2007; Fontanini & Katz, 2005; Katz, Simon, & Nicolelis, 2001). I aim to expand upon this through further data collection and analysis of said signals in assessing (a) lithium-induced sickness and (b) nicotine-induced mood alterations. Initially, I aim to characterize LFP signals due to lithium chloride (LiCl) onset, as well as how these signals return to baseline over time. Here I seek to test whether GC taste responses change depending on this sickness and whether correlations exist between GC taste responses and sickness-induced LFPs. Furthermore, I aim to assess how these signatures compare to those of animals with varying internal states. With this, I plan to test whether GC taste responses change depending on nicotine-induced state modulation and if there are correlations between these GC taste responses and nicotine-induced LFPs. Given that the BLA has been implicated in ascribing emotional valence, and thus tunes hedonics surrounding taste stimuli, it is reasonable to propose that the GC-BLA circuit (at least in part) drives taste processing. However, it has yet been established whether this circuit incorporates internal sensory information (ie. the welfare of an animal) similarly to its established role in integrating environmental/external information. I plan to probe this question through using multisite recordings assessing the involvement that GC-BLA coupling (measured through coherence and phase lag metrics) has in relaying body state information with the context of taste stimuli. Research in this realm of electrophysiology is lacking, yet we feel it is essential in understanding the mechanisms that drive behavior in a state-dependent manner.

Awards

  • Don Tucker Award Finalist at the Association for Chemoreception Sciences; 2019

  • Susan Lindquist Award Recipient; 2018

  • Association for Chemoreception Sciences Diversity Fellowship Travel Award; 2018

Courses Taught

  • Neurobiology of Sexuality, Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (BOLLI); 2018

Previous Publications


Stone, B. T., Kelly A. Correa, Timothy L. Brown, Andrew L. Spurgin, Maja Stikic, Robin R. Johnson, and Chris Berka. "Behavioral and neurophysiological signatures of benzodiazepine-related driving impairments." Frontiers in psychology 6 (2015): 179.


Correa, K. A., Stone, B. T., Stikic, M., Johnson, R. R., & Berka, C. (2015). Characterizing donation behavior from psychophysiological indices of narrative experience. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 301.


Stone, B., Correa, K., Thor, N., & Johnson, R. (2015). EEG Coherence Within Tutoring Dyads: A Novel Approach for Pedagogical Efficiency. In Foundations of Augmented Cognition (pp. 697-706). Springer International Publishing.


Stone, B., Skinner, A., Stikic, M., & Johnson, R. (2014). Assessing Neural Synchrony in Tutoring Dyads. In Foundations of Augmented Cognition. Advancing Human Performance and Decision-Making through Adaptive Systems (pp. 167-178). Springer International Publishing.


Johnson, R. R., Stone, B. T., Miranda, C. M., Vila, B., Lois, J., Michael, J. S., et al. (2014). Identifying psychophysiological indices of expert versus novice performance in deadly force judgment and decision making. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8.