Micaela Porod

Entering Class - 2023
Pronouns: she/her

E-MAIL:  [email protected]

Undergraduate Institution and Major:

University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh, B.A. in Psychology, 2021

Graduate Advisors

Nicola Grissom, Ph.D., Department of Psychology 
Ben Saunders, Ph.D., Department of Neuroscience

Graduate Awards

NRSA Fellow on T32 training grant T32-NS105604 2024-2025 Medical School Graduate Fellowship 2023

Committees

Outreach Committee, 2024 - present 
Career Facilitation Committee, 2024 - present

GPN Rotations

Jocelyn Richard, Ph.D., Department of Neuroscience 
Nicola Grissom, Ph.D., Department of Psychology 
Martha Streng, Ph.D., Department of Neuroscience 
Ben Saunders, Ph.D., Department of Neuroscience

Undergraduate Research

As an undergraduate, I worked primarily with Dr. Aaron Karst to study electrophysiological correlates of attentional processes in human participants. Following graduation, I completed a post-bac fellowship in the lab of Dr. Geoffrey Schoenbaum at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. There, I studied how cocaine-induced changes in the rat orbitofrontal cortex impact reward prediction error signaling by midbrain dopamine neurons. Additionally, I assisted on a project investigating the efficacy of a novel D3-receptor antagonist in reversing loss of insight following experience with cocaine. 

Undergraduate Publications

Post-bac: 

  • Panayi, M.C., Shetty, S., Porod, M., Bahena, L., Xi, Z.X., Newman, A.H., & Schoenbaum, G. (2024). The selective D3Receptor antagonist VK4-116 reverses loss of insight caused by self-administration of cocaine in rats. Neuropsychopharmacology, 49, 1590–1599. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-024-01858-7

Undergraduate Awards

Psi Chi inductee 2019 Dean's List 2017-2021

Micaela Porod