Pia-Kelsey T. O'Neill

|Assistant Professor
Academic Appointments

Assistant Professor

Research in my lab aims to provide insight into how emotional experience is encoded within neural circuits. Our primary interest in the lab is in an animal's escape response to threat, which involves the brain integrating features of the threatening stimuli, as well as the animal's own internal state and aspects of its environment. We seek to learn how neurons in the amygdala are involved in flexibly representing this complex array of features. We engineer custom behavioral experiments that promote a robust regime of behaviors in mice that can be closely monitored and manipulated. Using computational approaches, we relate the moment-to-moment changes in behavior to simultaneously-recorded neural activity, with the eventual goal of delineating fundamental principles by which emotional experiences can be encoded within the brain. 

Contact

Pia-Kelsey.O'Neill@dartmouth.edu
Moore Hall, Room 264
HB 6207

Department(s)

Psychological and Brain Sciences

Education

  • B.S. UCLA
  • Ph.D. Columbia University

Selected Publications

  • Complete list can be found here

    O'Neill, P.K.*, Posani, L.*, Meszaros, J., Warren, P., Schoonover, C., Fink, A.P., Axel, R., Fusi, S., Salzman, C.D. (2023) "The representational geometry of emotional states in the basolateral amygdala." bioRxiv. 

    Stujenske, J.M.*, O'Neill, P.K.*, Fernandes-Henriques C, Nahmoud I et al. (2022) "Prelimbic cortex drives discrimination of non-aversion via amygdala somatostatin interneurons." Neuron. Apr 5:S0896- 6273(22)00256-2.

    O'Neill, P.K., Gore, F., Salzman, C.D. (2018) "Basolateral amygdala circuits in positive and negative valence." Curr. Op. in Neurobiology.

    Parnaudeau, S.*, O'Neill, P.*, Bolkan, S., Ward, R.D., Abbas, A., Roth, B.L., Balsam, P., Gordon J.A., Kellendonk, C. (2013) "Inhibition of medio-dorsal thalamus disrupts thalamo-frontal connectivity and cognition." Neuron.

    Shirinyan D., Teshiba T., Taylor K., O'Neill P., Lee S., Krasne F. (2006): "Rostral ganglia are required for induction but not expression of crayfish escape reflex habituation: role of higher centers in reprogramming low-level circuits," Journal of Neurophysiology.

Courses