Kauê M. Costa

Applying new tools to behavioral tests to discern how we learn

- Dan Vergano

FIELD NEUROSCIENCE University of Alabama at Birmingham AGE 36

Kaué M. Costa was a Ph.D. student in Germany trying to understand how amphetamines cause hyperactivity when he noticed his mice were acting weird.

The mice were genetically engineered to help researchers study dopamine in the brain, and they were unusually hyperactive. The amphetamines they were taking calmed the females but not the males. The mice were learning differently based on sex, and this divergence was scrambling his results.