Douglas Barrett graduated with honors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. After a year of travel to China and around 48 states, Doug enrolled at the Institute for Neuroscience program at the University of Texas at Austin in 1998, where he was offered a Preemptive Fellowship. He has extensive experience as a T.A. for both graduate and undergraduate classes, and was awarded the Outstanding T.A. of the Year Award for Neuroscience in 2001. In the fall semester of 2001, Doug was the instructor for an undergraduate Biopsychology class. He was the head of the Neuroscience Orientation Committee in summer 2001, and has helped organize the annual UT Neuroscience Symposium for four years. In the spring of 2002, Research interests: My primary research goal is to investigate the changes in the brain that result from learning and memory, using metabolic mapping techniques to explore how changes in functional networks give rise to conditioned associations. I'm currently finishing a project involving the extinction of a conditioned fear association between tone and shock, which I will follow up with a contextual extinction experiment. My dissertation work will integrate the results of several conditioning paradigms, to form a cohesive argument for the existence of functional networks in the brain which underlie learning and memory phenomena. Of all the myriad functions of consciousness, the ability to encode memory in structural or biochemical changes in the brain has always struck me as the most enigmatic and complex. Learning and memory are perhaps the most distinctive indicators of intelligence, yet even the simplest creatures possess the rudiments of these basic abilities. When you consider the fact that all of your experiences and perceptions, all that you essentially are, is instantiated in no more than a couple of pounds of goo in your head, it really puts into perspective the fascinating field of neuroscience. Poster Presentations: N.L. Callaway, M. Wilson, D. Barrett, P.D. Riha, R. Turner, J.D. Berndt and F. Gonzalez-Lima. "Chronic sodium azide administration in rats: A behavioral model for the effect of metabolic deficit on learning and memory." Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. Vol. 26, 2000. 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, New Orleans, La. H.P. Nair, J.D. Berndt, D. Barrett, and F. Gonzalez-Lima. "Large-scale functional networks underlying extinction of behavior shift with development." Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. Vol. 26, 2000. 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, New Orleans, La. and UT Annual Neuroscience Symposium, February 10, 2001. Publications: H.P. Nair, J.D. Berndt, D.W. Barrett, and F. Gonzalez Lima. "Maturation of extinction behavior in infant rats: large-scale regional interactions with medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex." Journal of Neuroscience, June 15, 2001; 21(12): 4400-7. H.P. Nair, J.D. Berndt, D.W. Barrett, and F. Gonzalez-Lima. "Metabolic mapping of brain regions associated with behavioral extinction in preweanling rats." Brain Research, June 8, 2001; 903(1-2): 141-53.