Niamh Sabena
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Niamh is currently a junior at Hunter College pursuing a major in Psychology with a concentration in Physiology, as well as a minor in Philosophy.
She spent the summer of 2025 interning in Dr. Brad Grueter’s lab at Vanderbilt Medical Center. Niamh gained experience in electrophysiology, specifically the impact of mGlu5 receptor expression on parvalbumin fast-spiking interneurons (PV-FSI) connectivity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The project utilized ex vivo whole-cell patch clamp electrophysiology to assess spontaneous excitatory post-synaptic currents in PV-FSIs and pyramidal neurons in the mPFC. During the academic year, Niamh is a research assistant in Dr. Ekaterina Likhtik’s lab at CUNY Hunter College. She studies how cortical-subcortical communication, inhibitory signaling, oscillations, and neuro-glial interactions shape threat and safety learning, to reveal neural processes of emotion regulation relevant to psychiatric disorders. Niamh’s research interests lie in utilizing electrophysiological approaches to identify how synaptic and cellular mechanisms shape neural network function relevant to psychiatric disorders. |