Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481
ctognoni@wellesley.edu

Hola! My name is Christina Tognoni and I’m a rising senior at Wellesley College. I was born in Massachusetts but grew up in Johns Creek, Georgia. In high school I became fascinated with the sciences and psychology, and in college I soon found the Neuroscience Major to be a perfect way to combine my interests. I am also majoring in Spanish and spent last semester studying abroad in Córdoba, Spain! Last summer I joined a lab at Duke University where I researched how events early in development can affect how the adult rat brain responds to environmental factors, aging, and injury. In the following fall semester I worked in a lab at Harvard Medical School that looks at how mindfulness can affect touch perception and the somatosensory cortex in humans. What interests me most about neuroscience overall is the complexity that is needed to be understood in order to understand the bigger picture.

This summer I began working in the Tetel lab, where we investigate how ovarian steroid hormones function in the body and brain and how nuclear receptor coactivators can regulate their activity. The project I am working on focuses on the specificities of this regulation by using triple label immunohistochemistry and confocal analysis to explore the coexpression of steroid receptors and nuclear receptor coactivators in mouse brain. As I become more involved in studying neuroscience, I seek to look at the complexity and changes occurring at more specific levels and how these relate to more central topics such as behavior and disorder. This summer I anticipate becoming deeply involved in a project and continuing my work to accomplish a senior thesis. After graduation, I plan to pursue research and continue with graduate work in the neuroscience field.