Dragana Ivkovich Claflin

My research focuses on the development of learning and memory. A variety of behavioral procedures, with a special emphasis on classical eyeblink conditioning, enable us to study both the neural and behavioral processes that support different forms of associative learning across different stages of infant development. We are especially interested in characterizing the parallels between learning in human infants and in young rats pups that can be explained by similarities in central nervous system development. These studies focus on relating developmental changes in the cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex to changes in associative learning skills during infancy. Recently, we have been exploring, in rats, the detrimental effects of elevated plasma corticosterone levels on learning during critical periods of postnatal development, looking into potential interventions to reduce the impairment, and using immunohistochemical methods and confocal fluorescence microscopy to examine changes brain development. The ultimate goal of this type of research is to enhance our understanding of developmental learning disorders and how memory processing changes over the course of the developmental life span.