Big congrats to Gaby Castro, who presented her first scientific poster at the annual Mid-Atlantic Neuroscience Diversity Scholars (MiNDS) retreat at Temple University.

Gaby’s poster, entitled “Understanding the impact of acute alcohol administration on fear and anxiety circuitry: Study overview and preliminary behavioral results” represents the first fruits from her time spent working in Shackman lab. Her results provide compelling new experimental evidence that low-to-moderate doses of alcohol acutely dampen subjective feelings of fear and anxiety, and do so similarly for uncertain and certain threat. Her results also provide an important independent replication of other work from our group using the Maryland Threat Countdown task, demonstrating that the anticipation of aversive stimulation triggers a robust state of distress, and this fear and anxiety is particularly intense during the anticipation of uncertain threat (consistent with work in University students and Community volunteers).