Timothy Otto

Title: Associate Professor
Area: Behavioral Neuroscience
Phone: 732-445-0719/4382
Email: totto@rci.rutgers.edu
Campus: Busch
Building: Psych 327/322
Website: www.rci.rutgers.edu/~totto/

The primary focus of our work is to explore the ways in which information is acquired and stored in the mammalian brain. Most of these studies involve an examination of the neural substrates of olfactory (odor) memory in the rat. We focus mainly on olfactory memory for two reasons. First, rats exhibit a remarkable facility in learning when trained in tasks which use odors as stimuli. Second, the brain areas participating in the detection and analysis of odors are intimately and reciprocally connected with several brain areas known to play a prominent role in learning, including the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the rhinal cortical areas (perirhinal and entorhinal cortex).

These studies span several levels of neurobiological analysis. We are currently examining the participation of various brain regions in olfactory memory through neuropsychological (lesion or temporary inactivation) studies, and immunohistochemical studies examining the extent to which learning results in an activation of specific genes and/or intracellular proteins within brain cells. We have also used electrophysiological techniques to examine the response properties of neurons in the amygdala, hippocampus, and rhinal cortical areas in awake, behaving rats during learning. Finally, other studies have examined the extent to which, following experimentally-induced damage, regeneration of olfactory receptor neurons and the subsequent reinnervation of the olfactory bulb is related to a recovery of function, and whether this regeneration and recovery of function can be pharmacologically enhanced.

These studies have been supported by National Science Foundation grants IBN0316247, IBN9817145, and IBN9514526, a Discovery Award from Johnson & Johnson Inc., and the Busch Grant Program at Rutgers University.