Matthew Chafee, Ph.D.

Professor, Department of Neuroscience

E-MAIL: [email protected]

Research Interests:

Neural basis of spatial cognition and working memory, cortical system dysfunction in psychiatric disease


Selected Publications:

(For a comprehensive list of recent publications, refer to PubMed, a service provided by the National Library of Medicine.)

  • Blackman RK, Crowe DA, DeNicola AL, Sakellaridi S, Westerberg JA, Huynh AM, MacDonald AW 3rd, Sponheim SR, Chafee MV. Shared neural activity but distinct neural dynamics for cognitive control in monkey rrefrontal and parietal cortex. J Neurosci. 2023 Mar 9:JN-RM-1641-22.
  • Chafee MV. Using nonhuman primate models to reverse-engineer prefrontal circuit failure underlying cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Curr Top Behav Neurosci. 2023 Jan 7. doi: 10.1007/7854_2022_407.
  • Vinogradov S, Chafee MV, Lee E, Morishita H. Psychosis spectrum illnesses as disorders of prefrontal critical period plasticity. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2023 Jan;48(1):168-185.
  • Chafee MV, Averbeck BB. Unmasking schizophrenia: Synaptic pruning in adolescence reveals a latent physiological vulnerability in prefrontal recurrent networks. Biol Psychiatry. 2022 Sep 15;92(6):436-439.
  • Chafee MV, Heilbronner SR. Prefontal cortex. Curr Biol. 2022 Apr 25;32(8):R346-R351.
  • Zick JL, Crowe DA, Blackman RK, Schultz K, Bergstrand DW, DeNicola AL, Carter RE, Ebner TJ, Lanier LM, Netoff TI, Chafee MV. Disparate insults relevant to schizophrenia converge on impaired spike synchrony and weaker synaptic interactions in prefrontal local circuits. Curr Biol. 2022 Jan 10;32(1):14-25.e4.
  • Chafee MV. If I do A, B will happen: Dissecting circuits detecting causal relations between actions and outcomes in marmoset prefrontal cortex. Neuron. 2021 Aug 4;109(15):2370-2373.
  • Romanski LM, Chafee MV. A view from the top: Prefrontal control of object recognition. Neuron. 2021 Jan 6;109(1):6-8.
  • Kummerfeld E, Ma S, Blackman RK, DeNicola AL, Redish AD, Vinogradov S, Crowe DA, Chafee MV. Cognitive control rrrors in nonhuman primates resembling those in schizophrenia reflect opposing effects of NMDA receptor blockade on causal interactions between cells and circuits in prefrontal and parietal cortices. Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2020;5(7):705-714.
  • DeNicola AL, Park MY, Crowe DA, MacDonald AW 3rd, Chafee MV. Differential roles of MD thalamus and prefrontal cortex in decision making and state representation in a cognitive control task measuring deficits in schizophrenia. J Neurosci. 2020;40(8):1650-1667.
  • Heilbronner SR, Chafee MV. Learning How neurons fail inside of networks: Nonhuman primates provide critical data for psychiatry. Neuron. 2019;102(1):21-26.
  • Zick JL, Blackman RK, Crowe DA, Amirikian B, DeNicola AL, Netoff TI, Chafee MV. Blocking NMDAR disrupts spike timing and decouples monkey prefrontal circuits: implications for activity-dependent disconnection in Schizophrenia. Neuron. 2018;98(6):1243-1255.
  • Kang SS, MacDonald AW 3rd, Chafee MV, Im CH, Bernat EM, Davenport ND, Sponheim SR.  Abnormal cortical neural synchrony during working memory in schizophrenia.  Clin Neurophysiol. 2018;129:210-221.
  • Kang SS, MacDonald AW 3rd, Chafee MV, Im CH, Bernat EM, Davenport ND, Sponheim SR. Abnormal cortical neural synchrony during working memory in schizophrenia. Clin Neurophysiol. 2018;129(1):210-221.
  • Chafee MV, Crowe DA. Implicit and explicit learning mechanisms meet in monkey prefrontal cortex. Neuron. 2017;96(2):256-258.
  • Averbeck BB, Chafee MV. Using model systems to understand errant plasticity mechanisms in psychiatric disorders. Nat Neurosci. 2016;19:1418-1425.
  • Blackman RK, Crowe DA, DeNicola AL, Sakellaridi S, MacDonald AW 3rd, Chafee MV. Monkey prefrontal neurons reflect logical operations for cognitive control in a variant of the AX continuous performance task (AX-CPT). J Neurosci. 2016;36:4067-4079.
  • MacDonald Iii AW, Zick JL, Chafee MV, Netoff TI. Integrating insults: Using fault tree analysis to guide schizophrenia research across levels of analysis. Front Hum Neurosci. 2016 Jan 6;9:698.
  • Elshaikh AA, Sponheim SR, Chafee MV, MacDonald AW. Spatial attentional control is not impaired in schizophrenia: Dissociating specific deficits from generalized impairments. J Abnorm Psychol. 2015;124(2):302-308.

Current Graduate Students:

Sam Brunson (Neuroscience, University of Minnesota).

Former Graduate Students:

Min-Yoon Park (Ph.D. 2020, Neuroscience, University of Minnesota).

Adele DeNicola  (Ph.D. 2019, Neuroscience, University of Minnesota).

Jennifer Zick (Ph.D. 2018, Neuroscience, University of Minnesota).

Rachael Blackman (Ph.D. 2013, Neuroscience, University of Minnesota).

Picture of Matthew Chafee