Hamid Taghipourbibalan
Job description
Hamid basically works as a Ph.D. fellow in McCutcheon Lab to study the dynamics of protein appetite, especially in response to dietary restriction of protein intake. In this respect, he uses a spectrum of various approaches to directly monitor the behavior of the animal model in the homecage, to sample and analyze gut microbial flora, and finally to pinpoint the neural structures governing the correlated behaviors.
In addition, Hamid also contributes to some teaching duties in the bachelor's degree program for Psychology at the Arctic University of Norway, UiT.
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Publications outside Cristin
Yarmohammadi-Samani, P., Taghipourbibalan, H. & Vatanparast, J. Long-lasting postnatal sensory deprivation alters dendritic morphology of pyramidal neurons in the rat hippocampus: behavioral correlates. Neuroscience (2021) doi:10.1016/J.NEUROSCIENCE.2021.11.011.
Research interests
We are such infinitesimally small dust particles on a piece of a rock, which itself is an aggregate of stardust, floating on the beams of light emitted from a mediocre star, in a far corner of a remote galaxy.
In this melancholic absurd universe, which always remains silent in response to our joys and miseries, Hamid is originally interested to understand how we become interested!
In a more straight-to-the-face manner, how our brain fools us to go through the trenches of stupid sufferings in life, to ensure our genes' survival, and in a more technical term, how the 1)Reward circuitries ensure the drive to our lives.
His enthusiasm for neuroscience was ignited by bird-watching, he was fascinated by complex vocalizations and social interactions of Chickadees (Parus major). How birds are capable of doing tasks which require neural faculties almost unique to primates or humans? So Hamid is basically interested in the 2)convergent evolution of brains and minds.
In his master studies, he started working on a famous model system in neuroscience called the " whisker-barrel pathway" to investigate the mechanisms of 3)experience-dependent-plasticity in the brain. At this point, he had the chance to study the relationship between the inputs to the brain and the way the brain wires up, which is a fundamental concept in neuroscience and a versatile hot topic, match to many scales of study and approaches in neuroscience. No matter what are the inputs, they can be pure sensory inputs, such as tactile or visual inputs, they can be social inputs like social defeat, isolation, or separation, or even they can be metabolic inputs such as nutrients.
Therefore, at the moment, Hamid has focused on 4)The neural mechanisms of feeding behavior, he is willing to unravel the neural substrates involved in the dynamism of protein appetite in our brains.
Teaching
Seminars in biological psychology for the bachelor's degree students of Psychology at UiT.
