Garet Lahvis, Ph.D.
Position
Assistant Professor
Contact
lahvisg@ohsu.edu; Phone: 503-346-0820; Fax: 503-494-6877
Research Interests
social motivation, ultrasonic vocalizations, genetics, substance abuse, autism
Preceptor Rotations/Mentorship Availability
Dr. Lahvis is available for preceptor rotations and mentorship for all upcoming academic terms.
Summary of Current Research
Social interactions among humans and animal models are highly responsive to environmental context and the emotional states of the social participants. The ability to regulate social interactions requires an individual to express signals that communicate emotional information and express behaviors that indicate recognition of signals from others. Deficits in these abilities are featured in mental illnesses including addiction, depression, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and pervasive developmental disorders, such as autism.
To understand these processes, we study the social behavior of juvenile mice. We are interested in social behaviors and their anatomical and physiological substrates. We examine how genetic and environmental variables influence the ability of a juvenile mouse to seek a social reward, to vocalize in response to changing social contexts, and to learn fear from observations of other mice that undergo environmental contingencies that promote fear learning. Genetic studies include the use of inbred strains and gene-targeted mice that are relevant to reward physiology and autism. Environmental studies focus on the effects of marine neurotoxins that contribute to pathologies in juvenile social behavior. We employ brain-imaging techniques, such as glucose uptake and expression of immediate early genes, as well as metrics of systemic physiology, such as heart rate monitoring, to elucidate biological mechanisms of normal social behavior and its pathologies.
Publications
Please see Dr. Lahvis' PubMed ListingPublications are available on request from lahvisg@ohsu.edu
Selected publications are listed below.
Lahvis, GP, Alleva, E and Scattoni, M-L. 2011. Translating Mouse Vocalizations: Prosody and Frequency Modulation. Genes, Brain and Behavior. 10 (1) 4-16. PMID:20497235. PMCID: PMC2936813 [Available on 2012/2/1]
Kennedy, BC, Panksepp, JB, Wong, JC, Krause, EJ and Lahvis, GP. 2011. Age-dependent and strain-dependent influences of morphine on mouse social investigation behavior. Behavioural Pharmacology. 22(2):147-59.
Panksepp JB and Lahvis, GP. 2011. Rodent empathy and affective neuroscience. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 35:1864-1875. PMID: 21672550. PMCID: PMC3183383 [Available on 2012/10/1]
Bishop, SL and Lahvis, GP. 2011. The Autism Diagnosis in Translation: Shared Affect in Children and Mouse Models. Autism Research 4:317-335.
Kennedy, BC, Panksepp, JB, Runckel, PA, and Lahvis, GP. 2011. Social influences on morphine-conditioned place preference in adolescent BALB/cJ and C57BL/6J mice. Psychopharmacology [Epub ahead of print]
Lahvis, GP and Black, LM. 2011. Social Interactions in the Clinic and the Cage: Towards a Mouse Model of Autism In: Translational Animal Models of Behavioral Analysis. Ed: Jacob Raber, Humana Press (Springer). Neuromethods. 50:153-192.
Kuehl, D, Haebler, R, Potter, C, Lahvis, G, Donahue, M and Regal, R. 2009. PFOS and PFOSA in bottlenose dolphins: An investigation into two unusually high mortality epizootics. Reproductive Toxicology. 27(3-4):421-421.
