Resources

Research Facilities

The Evolutionary Neuroscience Lab will consists of two research areas: a wet lab located in the in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology in the Peabody Museum building, and a dog behavior lab located in the Northwest Building in the Center for Brain Science.  The Northwest Building and Peabody Museum are next door to each other, and are physically connected.

Wet Lab

The wet lab is outfitted for large-format frozen tissue sectioning, histology and immunohistochemistry, and high-throughput digital microscopy.  

Hecht wet lab diagramCanine Behavior & MRI Lab

The dog lab is a custom-built suite with a soundproof testing area, Noldus video recording equipment and analysis software, volunteer waiting area with one-way observation window, and vet care area.  It is located adjacent to the MRI in the Center for Brain Science.

Hecht behavior lab diagram

Tools and Data Resources

The lab makes use of large, public databases of neuroimaging data, including the Human Connectome Project and the National Chimpanzee Brain Resource.  Typical histological procedures include Nissl and Gallyas silver staining and immunohistochemistry.  Student and postdoctoral projects can take advantage of a collection of several dozen fixed fox and dog brains; a digital library of fox and dog microscopy images; banked 9.4T MRI and DTI images from fixed brains of various species; and a variety of banked in vivo human and nonhuman primate neuroimaging scans of various modalities.