Kiara Vega Bellido

PhD student in the Daoyun Ji Systems Neuro Lab at Baylor College of Medicine (https://www.bcm.edu/research/labs-and-centers/faculty-labs/daoyun-ji-lab) who aspires to be a lifelong student of the nervous system.

Currently, my intellectual resources are being poured into my thesis project on the neuroplasticity underlying Contextual Fear Memory acquisition and subsequent mnemonic processes (e.g. retrieval, sleep-mediated consolidation, etc). I study the synaptic plasticity that occurs in a specific bundle of hippocampal connections: the famous Schaffer collateral synaptic pathway. The main technique we make use of in our lab is microdrive tetrode recordings in freely moving rats and mice in order to answer questions about how the brain encodes, stores, and uses information pertaining to episodic memory. Therefore, I use electrophysiological measurements such as fEPSPs and spiking probability as proxy indicators of synaptic transmission strength. Changes reflected in these measurements are due to changes in the strength of the synapses upstream of the cells being recorded; in our case in CA1 pyramidal cells.

Besides my working on my project, my passions include scicomm, science policy advocacy, and dismantling stigma surrounding mental illness through education and awareness. Thus, I engage in many initiatives and work outside of the lab that I consider greatly important and that contribute to my fulfillment, some of which I've outlined here.