And the winner of the Cutest Pet Picture is………. Oscar, Mojo, and Banjo! This was a tight race, so congratulations to all the participants. You can see all these cute pictures in the Image Gallery whenever you like.

And the Best Dressed Pet award goes to Watson, who is sporting his Buckeye pride!

Congratulations to Sirius for being the most photogenic pet in the NGSO!

Thanks to everyone who voted! We have a two-way tie for Funniest Pet Picture! Congratulations to Gimli, and the trio of Oscar, Mojo, and Banjo!

Happy birthday to all our NGP friends born in October. Pictured from left to right: Isabella Palazzo, William Walker, and Damon DiSabato.

Congrats to David Phenis, who last week defended his dissertation titled, “Performance of Adult Rats Exposed to Elevated Levels of Kynurenic Acid during Gestation in a Rodent Target Detection Task: A Translational Model for Studying the Effects of Cognitive Training.” David graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a B.S. in Biochemistry. After graduation, David worked as a research assistant at the Cleveland Clinic examining transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. In 2013 David joined the neuroscience graduate program at OSU and begin work as a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. John Bruno. The Bruno lab worked on exploring animal models of the cognitive deficits present in schizophrenia. David’s dissertation work focused on (1) the further validation of a rodent Target Detection Task (rTDT) analogous to human Continuous Performance Tasks, (2) the further validation of the embryonic kynurenine (EKYN) animal model of schizophrenia, and (3) the use of EKYN deficits in the rTDT as a platform to assess the efficacy of cognitive training via prior experience in cognitively demanding tasks.