Honoring Dr. Phil Teitelbaum

“Phil Fest” – celebrating Philip Teitelbaum’s 83^rd birthday – from Neil Rowland

Phil Teitelbaum joined the UF Department of Psychology as a Distinguished Graduate research Professor in 1984, and retired in May 2010. He was honored (on 11/11/11) near the occasion of his 83rd birthday by his professional colleagues at a one-day celebration “Quo Vadis Behavioral Neuroscience: A Festschrift for Philip Teitelbaum” associated with the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington D.C.

The Festschrift took the form of 20 minute presentations through the day by former students, collaborators, and admirers, ranging from retrospective talks to new directions in the areas that Phil pioneered. The first session (moderated by Norm Adler) reflected on Phil’s early work with the lateral hypothalamic syndrome, with presentations from Paul Rozin, Rae Silver, and Ed Stricker. The second session (moderated by Susan Bachus) focused on psychoactive drug action with presentations from Tim Schallert, John Marshall and Trevor Robbins. The next session (moderated by Dave Wolgin) emphasized detailed analysis of behavior, with talks from Ian Whishaw, Serge Pellis and Ilan Golani. The last session (moderated by Neil Rowland) emphasized human movement disorders with presentations from Michael Zigmond, Gianluca Esposito, Osnat Teitelbaum, and ended with a short address by Phil himself. A dinner reception was marked by several anecdotes from friends, the most memorable of which must be from Ilan Golani who assisted Phil in removing exotic lizards from inside his pants on a roadside in Israel. In case you ask, this was not actually a planned part of their collaboration on movement notation!

Each of the talks illustrated an area of science in which Phil has made a profound and enduring contribution –from rodents to humans – including note of the difference in approach between Physiological Psychology (the title of Phil’s 1967 classic text) and Behavioral Neuroscience. These talks and other invited papers will appear shortly in a special issue of Behavioral Brain Research. The main architect of the event was Henry Szechtman, with help from Jim Stellar, Serge Pellis, Susan Bachus, Serge Pellis, and myself. It was enabled by funding from several institutions, for which we are most greatful, including UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

NEW ARRIVAL

Welcome Dr. Natalie Ebner!

Natalie Ebner started as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Florida in Fall 2011. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology with a particular focus on lifespan development and aging from the Free University of Berlin, in Germany. She then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin,Germany. In 2007, she moved to the United States to work as Post-Doctoral Researcher, and later Associate Research Scientist, at Yale University.

At University of Florida, she plans to continue and expand her research on how socially relevant information biases attention and memory in adults of different ages. In particular, she will continue to examining how emotional (e.g., faces displaying different emotion expressions, positive and negative personality traits, etc.) and self-relevant information (e.g., related to one’s own age, personal goals and agendas, and personality, etc.) affect attention and memory and how, and why, this may change across the lifespan. She uses a multi-methods approach in her research that combines convergent measures, including self-report, behavior observation, eye tracking, and functional neuroimaging techniques, with the aim to integrate introspective, behavioral, and neuropsychological data. Together with a group of graduate and undergraduate students, she is currently setting up her eye-tracking lab at the University of Florida as well as a behavioral lab and connections to the McKnight Brain Institute for functional resonance imaging data collection.

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Faculty Spotlight-Darlene Kertes

Dr. Darlene Kertes is an Assistant Professor in the Developmental Area of the Psychology Department and is affiliated with the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Area and the University of Florida Genetics Institute. She received her undergraduate degree from Vassar College and her doctorate in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development. She was a postdoctoral scholar at the Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she now holds an affiliate faculty appointment. Dr. Kertes is a former Fulbright Scholar as well as a former Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Institutes of Health sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Research in Child Development. She joined the faculty in Psychology at UF in the fall of 2009.

Dr. Kertes’ research focuses on environmental and genetic factors that impact activity of a stress-sensitive neurobiological system and risk for stress-related emotional and health problems. Life experiences have widespread effects throughout the body and brain by altering the activity of a neuroendocrine stress response system known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. Dr. Kertes’ overall research program is guided by the observation that experiences with stressors early in life may alter a genetically-based set point for activation of the HPA stress response. As an individual prepares for later life stressors, detrimental effects of either a highly reactive or an under-reactive system can result from this adaptive process. These detrimental effects may play an etiologic role in emotional and health problems.

Dr. Kertes’ research on environmental factors that impact the stress response system and risk for stress-related disorders has centered on the caregiving context, including the parent-child relationship. Her research has shown that children vulnerable to react to novel experiences with fear showed heightened cortisol levels when facing such stressors. However, for children with highly sensitive parents, there was no rise in cortisol. Having a supportive, responsive parent buffered the biological stress response even though the parent was not present which shows, at a biological level, that a history of high quality parenting equips children to deal with stressors of daily life.

Given that many children do not experience supportive care from parents, Dr. Kertes’ latest research in this area tests the potential buffering role of another important social support figure-- pets. Pets have an enormous impact on the lives of millions of children, serving as confidantes in daily life. Dogs in particular also serve as therapeutic aides in educational and health care settings. It is commonly believed, but not tested, that human-animal interaction confers stress-reducing emotional and health benefits. Dr. Kertes, in a collaborative project with Dr. Wynne in the Behavior Analysis area, was awarded a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R03HD071288) to pursue this line of work. The major goal is to test whether a child’s neurobiological response to stress is buffered by either the presence of or quality of relationship with the child’s pet dog. The research team is also examining factors impacting dogs’ effectiveness in buffering children’s stress responses, including genetically-influenced risks, behaviors, and aspects of family life. This study puts commonly held notions about the benefits of pet ownership to the test, and has potential consequences for a wide range of higher risk populations, including children who are maltreated and pediatric patients undergoing stressful medical procedures.

In her work on genetic factors, Dr. Kertes’ research has elucidated the role of genes regulating the stress response system on risk for stress-related emotional and health problems. Dr. Kertes’ research was the first to document in adults that variants in a gene central to neural regulation of the stress response distinguished alcohol dependent individuals with high levels of depressive symptoms from those without depressive symptoms. This neural system is widely believed to play a role in the transition to dependence, its maintenance, and relapse during abstinence in the face of life stress by contributing to a residual negative emotional state in the cycle of addiction. Her recent work indicated this gene predicts risk for depressive symptoms in both American and European populations.

Dr. Kertes’ latest research in this area focuses on gene-environment interaction in the developmental precursors of these disorders. She and her colleagues are currently investigating whether genes regulating stress system activity, including genetic candidates identified in her research with adults, are involved directly or via interaction with environmental factors, in developmental antecedents or trajectory of depressive and substance use problems in adolescence-- a time when symptoms typically first emerge.

In her work on the interplay of genetics and environmental influences on the stress response system, Dr. Kertes’ research also targets the biological mechanisms by which environmental factors have their effects on stress system activity and subsequently, behavior. Dr. Kertes is funded by grants from the Michael L. & Judith D. Woodruff Foundation and the UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute to pursue this research. She is currently developing novel laboratory methods to obtain biomarkers to indicate the degree to which particular stretches of DNA are accessible for gene transcription which could be used in studies of neurobiological stress system activity in children.

In addition to her research activities, Dr. Kertes serves on the editorial board for Frontiers in Genetics and as a reviewer for eight journals spanning research in developmental psychology, neuroendocrinology, and psychiatry. For several years she has also served as an advisor for the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and National Coalition for Health Profession Education in Genetics in developing a website on genetics for behavioral and social scientists (www.nchpeg.org/bssr/). She is very active in service to the department via contributions to a variety of developmental area and department-wide committees. Dr. Kertes has mentored students in the Psychology Deparment and Gene Institute at the graduate level, and pre-professional, graduate- and medical-school bound undergraduates.

In memoriam Theodore “Snook” Fryer

The longest-serving staff member of the Psychology department, and arguably one of its greatest characters, passed away on August 1st, 2011. Theo, the moniker by which most of us knew him, joined the department about 1960 and retired in 2003. When Wilse “Bernie” Webb was hired as Chair in 1958 with a mandate to build a research-oriented Department, one of his tasks was to staff the department adequately to support new faculty hires. To this end, he established an animal research program, initially Bernie himself and Brad Bunnell (1958), shortly to be joined by Hank Pennypacker (1962), Don Dewsbury (1966), Ed Malagodi (1967), and others. To support this program Bernie hired Theo, finishing at a local high school, part-time then as the program grew as full-time animal caretaker. There was no institutional training at that time – Theo was given guidelines on animal care by the faculty but was almost entirely self-taught. At one time a coordinator (Stu Fabric) was hired to oversee Theo, but he didn’t last too long! The fact is that the various species of animals never went without food, water, and clean bedding thanks to 7-day-a-week efforts of Theo. The first animal facility was in two of the cinderblock buildings in the Surge Area off Archer Road which at that time was still a 2 lane rural road with a 65 mph limit, aka drag racing strip for Theo’s big red Chevy. Don Dewsbury recalls that Theo steam cleaned the animal cages using an unreliable green clunker of a machine situated between the buildings, a particularly unenviable task in the height of summer! Two other notable aspects of Theo’s tenure in the Surge era were his fending off snakes that were inevitably attracted to rodent odors in the soiled bedding dump and his periodic game to capture of Hank’s squirrel monkeys when they escaped into the rafters. In the move to the new Psychology building in 1968, with a well-appointed indoor animal facility, these rather unique aspects of environmental enrichment were lost. Over the years this facility became progressively more rule-governed, via by AAALAC accreditation and then by central administration from Animal Care Services, moves that didn’t fit well with Theo’s personality. Dewsbury writes that Theo “was his own man. He would not take guff from those he did not respect. Often that was well-deserved, if not always done with diplomacy. Extraverted and lively, he is etched in the memory of all who knew him. He was a hard worker even when he gave the impression that he was otherwise.”

The fact remains that the early success and growth of our animal research program, including generations of graduate students, is due in no small measure to Theo. He was the right person at the right time, and for over four decades gave our program a stable continuity. Sadly, Theo did not get to enjoy as long or as healthy a retirement as he earned, but he has our eternal respect.

-Neil Rowland