Current Rappaport Fellows at McLean

Natalia V. Luchkina, PhD

2017-2018 Rappaport Mental Health Research Scholar

Natalia V. Luchkina, PhD, received her PhD degree from the University of Helsinki in Finland. During her graduate studies, Dr. Luchkina explored a developmental profile of mechanisms underlying the induction and expression of long-term-potentiation at CA3-CA1 synapses in the hippocampus. Her results linked the expression of GluA4 subunits of the AMPA receptor to alterations in signaling requirements for the induction of long-term potentiation, explaining the switch in LTP kinase dependency during synapse maturation. She found that GluA4 subunit expression may define the signaling requirements for LTP and silent synapse activation during a critical period of synapse development and also demonstrated that maturation of glutamatergic synapses involves a critical period during which presynaptic function is highly susceptible to activity-dependent regulation through a PKC-dependent mechanism.

Dr. Luchkina will use her Rappaport Research Fellowship to support her work to determine how neuronal synaptic and circuit-level mechanisms encode fear and extinction memories.

Learn more about Dr. Luchkina

Dr. Luchkina holds a B.S. in Biology/Biophysics and an M.S. in Neuroscience from Saint Petersburg State University in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She received a PhD in Physiology and Neuroscience in 2015 from the University of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland. She is the 2010 recipient of the CIMO Fellowship from the Centre for International Mobility. She was awarded a Doctoral Research Fellowship from the Finnish Graduate School of Neuroscience to support her doctoral studies. She has been a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at McLean Hospital since 2016.

Galen Missig, PhD

2017-2018 Rappaport Mental Health Research Scholar

Galen Missig, PhD, joined the laboratory of Dr. Bill Carlezon as a post-doctoral research in fall of 2015. His research is focused on inflammatory dysregulation in autism spectrum disorders and examines how perturbations of the early perinatal environment may subsequently alter neurodevelopment and manifest in abnormal behaviors. To investigate these questions, Dr. Missig draws on his prior background in behavioral and molecular neuroscience techniques, collaborates with a number of researchers in different disciplines, and leads a team of three researchers.

Dr. Missig will use the Rappaport Research Fellowship to support his research into the mechanisms that underlie a possible association between autoimmune-related inflammation during pregnancy and autism spectrum disorders.

Lean more about Dr. Missig

Dr. Missig holds a B.S. in Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of Delaware. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Vermont in 2015 and has been a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Behavioral Genetics Laboratory at McLean Hospital since then.

Photos by Patrick O’Connor; text courtesy McLean Development Office.