On September 12th, we hosted our first Undergraduate Research Expo. Eleven students from Tufts, MIT and Harvard held short Ted-Talk style presentations on a topic of their choice. Here is the profile of presenter Nina Lutz:
Nina Lutz is a student at Tufts majoring in clinical psychology and biology. Her presentation was on microglia, brain plasticity and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
Nina went on to explain that microglia are the brain’s resident immune cells and play an active role in brain plasticity. Because of this dual role, microglia are potentially important in the brain’s response to alcohol, especially in connection with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. As a result of this, Nina used morphology, density and distribution analyses to study the effects of alcohol on microglia, both acutely and long term.
