Members
Brian Prendergast
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and The College
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1998
Field Specialties:
Quantification of gene expression using PCR, real-time PCR and cDNA microarray methods; stereotaxic surgery; behavioral assesment of small mammals.
Contact Information
Phone: (773) 702-2895
Fax: (773) 702-6898
prendergast@uchicago.edu
Institute for Mind and Biology
940 E. 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Areas of Research
Dr. Prendergast is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and The College at the University of Chicago. He joined the faculty of the Institute for Mind and Biology in the fall of 2003. He received his doctoral degree in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998, where he was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship (1998-1999). Dr. Prendergast also has received a Postdoctoral Fellowship from The John Hopkins University (1999-2000).
When an organism exhibits a given behavior or initiates a physiological process can be as important as whether it does so at all. From daily patterns of arousal and attention to annual patterns of reproduction and illness, biological clocks impinge on the behavior and physiology of humans and other animals. The research in our lab focuses on biological clocks in the brain. We are conducting experiments that seek to better understand the internal representation of time by identifying neural and endocrine mechanisms by which organisms mark the passing of the seasons.
Changes in the length of the day (the "photoperiod") function as important environmental signals for cueing seasonal clocks. However, the context within which a given photoperiod is experienced exerts a profound effect on an individual's response to it. Experiments using hamsters and mice as model systems focus on how changes in photoperiod interact with internal biological clocks to generate seasonal rhythms of thermoregulation, food intake, reproduction, and immune function. A major focus of our research includes specifying the environmental variables that provide context for the interpretation of external (photoperiod) and internal (clock-like) time signals.
Our research is motivated by an awareness of potential clinical implications of research on biological timekeeping, and I endeavor to link basic research to problems of human disease whenever rational. However, basic research on issues in biological psychology and regulatory biology is valuable knowledge in its own right, and we engage research at multiple levels of analysis, ranging from evolutionary mechanisms to formal modeling to neuroendocrine gene expression. Within a broadly-defined rubric of biological timing, I encourage both undergraduate-and graduate-level members of the lab to develop their own original lines of inquiry.
