Associate Professor of Psychology at Haverford College
Amanda was this year’s only Been Lab graduating senior! As is our lab’s tradition, she turned in her thesis, popped champagne, and signed where the cork hit the ceiling! After graduating, Amanda will be an IRTA postbac fellow at the NIH.
Check our new work in the Journal of Neuroendocrinology: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jne.13278
Congrats to the 7 Haverford student authors!
Congratulations to Been Lab member Helen Moniz (’24) who was awarded the Beckman Scholarship. The Beckman Scholars Program is a limited-submission, invitation-only program that supports a 15-month mentored research experience for exceptional undergraduate students in chemistry, biological sciences, or interdisciplinary combinations thereof. Congrats, Helen!
Check out our new article, “New Publication: Estradiol withdrawal following a hormone simulated pregnancy induces deficits in affective behaviors and increases ∆FosB in D1 and D2 neurons in the nucleus accumbens core in mice” published in Hormones and Behavior!
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36645923/
Congratulations to the 8 members of the Been Lab who graduated in 2022! Can’t wait to see all of the exciting work you’ll do in your post-Haverford lives!
Professor Been was honored to receive the Mentor Award from the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience. Read more about it here: https://www.haverford.edu/college-communications/news/laura-been-honored-faculty-undergraduate-neuroscience-mentor-award
Check out our new review article, “Hormones and Neuroplasticity: A Lifetime of Adaptive Responses” published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34808191/
Professor Been was awarded an R15 AREA Grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. This award will fund experiments that seek to identify the mechanism by which postpartum estrogen withdrawal impacts mesolimbic brain circuitry and motivated behaviors. We are particularly excited to bring a new technique, fast scan cyclic voltammetry, to the lab! Big thanks to the many previous Been Lab students who generated the preliminary data for this grant, and to our collaborators Dr. Eric Nestler (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) and Dr. Rodrigo España (Drexel College of Medicine). Read more about it here: https://hav.to/8fn
Congratulations to the five Class of 2021 graduating seniors: Eliza Koren, Nicole Swisher, Kagan Harris, Mari Horton, and Hailey Morris! We are so proud of the excellent work you did in the Been Lab, and the amazing theses you wrote! 
Left: Nicole Swisher and Eliza Koren, whose thesis research examined the role of perceived autonomy on neuroscience content retention and growth mindset outcomes in an online neuroscience education outreach program in 5th graders; Right: Hailey Morris, Mari Horton, and Kagan Harris, whose thesis research examined the impact of peripartum estrogen fluctuations on sleep actigraphy and plasticity in dorsal raphe serotonin neurons in Syrian hamsters.
Check out our new publication “Estrogen withdrawal increases postpartum anxiety via oxytocin plasticity in the paraventricular hypothalamus and dorsal raphe nucleus,” which is in press at Biological Psychiatry! Congratulations to the 12 Haverford student co-authors!
