Our lab has been and is providing exiting undergraduate research opportunities. At any given time, between five and ten Cornell Undergraduate students are participating in research projects. Stundents often work in the lab for several years in the row. During the school year, undergraduates can enroll in research for credit. During the summer, we often are able to pay a stipend for undergraduate researchers, including students from other colleges. Many of our students participate in the Cornell Hughes Program during the summer. During their senior year, eligible Cornell students can work on their honor's thesis in the lab. Many of these honors thesis' have been published. Undergraduates in our lab come from a variety of majors, thus far including biology, psychology, electrical engineering and computer science. Projects include behavioral and electrophysiological experiments in rodents as well as computational projects.

Currently available projects for undergraduate research:

(1) Pharmacology of olfactory learning and memory. This broader project involves infusing agonists and antagonists to specific neurotransmitters directly into the olfactory bulb and testing the effect on a range of olfactory behaviors (rats and mice).

(2) Olfactory short term memory. This project aims at designing a short term memory or delayed-match-to-sample test using olfactory stimuli in rats and mice.

(3) Behavioral phenotyping in mice. This broader project involves testing different strains of mice as well as genetically modificed mice in several behavioral paradigms including classical conditioning, passive avoidance, latent inhibition, open field. The goal is to develop a broad range of tasks to behaviorally phenotype mice.

(4) Computational modeling projects. A range of computational modeling projects is always available.

(5) Odor mixture processing in rats and mice. This project aims at further clarifying how odor mixtures are processed.

Publications with undergraduate authors (indicated by *):

Kiselycznyk*, CL, Zhang*, S. and Linster, C. (2006). Role of centrifugal projections to the olfactory bulb in olfactory processing. Learning and Memory. 13(5):575-9.

Mandairon, N., Ferretti*, CJ, Stack*, CM, Rubin*, DB., Cleland, TA and Linster (C). (2006) Cholinergic modulation in the olfactory bulb influences spontaneous discrimination in adults rats. EJ. Neuroscience (in press).

Mandairon, N. , Stack*, C and Linster, C (2006) Olfactory enrichment improves the recognition of individual components in binary mixtures in adult rats. Physiology and Behavior89(3):379-84.

Mandairon, N. , Stack*, C Kisenycznyk*, C and Linster, C (2006) Broad activation of the olfactory bulb produces long-lasting changes in odor perception in rats. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 5;103(36):13543-8.

Wei*, C.J., Linster, C. and Cleland, T.A. (2006) Dopamine D2 receptor activation modulates perceived odor intensity. Behav. Neurosc.120(2):393-400.

Mandairon, N., Stack*, C., Kiselycznyk*, C. and Linster, C. (2006) Enrichment to odors improves olfactory discrimination in adult rats. Behav. Neurosc. 120(1):173-9.

Armstrong*, CM, DeVito*, LM and Cleland, TA (2006) One-trial associative learning in neonatal mice. Chem. Senses. 31(4):343-9.

Cleland, TA and Sethupathy*, P. (2006) Non-topographical contrast enhancement in the olfactory bulb. BMC Neurosc. 7:&.

Pavlis*, M., Ferretti*, C., Levy*, A., Gupta*, N. and Linster, C. (2006) L-DOPA Improves Odor Discrimination Learning in Rats. Physiol. & Behav. 87(1): 109-13.

Rubin*, DB, Cleland, TA. (2006) Dynamical mechanisms of odor processing in olfactory bulb mitral cells. J. Neurophysiol. 96(2):555-68.

Yue*, Cleland, Pavlis* and Linster (2004) Opposing effects of dopamine D1 and D2 modulation on olfactory discrimination learning  Behavioral Neuroscience, 118 (1).

Cleland, TA and Narla*, VA (2003) Intensity modulation of olfactory acuity. Behav. Neurosci. 117(6):1434-40.

Wiltrout*, C., Dogra*, S. and Linster, C. (2003) Configurational and non-configurational odor mixture perception. Behavioral Neuroscience, 117 (2): 236-245.

Linster, C., Johnson, B., Yue*, E.L., Morse*, A. and Leon, M. (2002) Spontaneous Versus Reinforced Olfactory Discriminations, Journal of Neuroscience 22(16):6842-5.

Giannaris*, E.L.,  Cleland T.A. and  Linster , C. (2002) Intramodal blocking between olfactory stimuli in rats: behavioral results and computational analysis. Physiology and Behavior (in press).

Cleland, T.A., Morse*, A., Yue*, E.L. and Linster, C. (2002) Behavioral models for odor similarity. Behavioral Neuroscience 116 (2): 222–231.

C. Linster, B. Johnson,  E. Yue*, a. Morse*, Y. Choi, M. Choi, A. Messiha, M. Leon. (2001) Perceptual Correlates of Neural Representations Evoked by Odorant Enantiomers Journal of Neuroscience , 24(4), 9837-9843.