Dr. Molas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG). She received her PhD in Biomedicine听in 2012听(Pompeu Fabra University) in the laboratory of Dr. Mara Dierssen at the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Spain. On 2014, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Andrew R Tapper at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School (UMAss Chan) as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Since 2021, she became faculty member in the Dept. of Neurobiology at the UMass Chan, where through her independent work on novelty circuits she received a 2021 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant. The Molas lab seeks to understand the neural circuits and mechanisms that underlie novelty responses and adaptive learning, in reward- and aversive-related contexts using multidisciplinary and integrative state-of-the-art techniques.
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Selected Publications:
Molas S, Zhao-Shea R, Freels TG, Tapper AR. (2023). 听Viral Tracing Confirms Paranigral Ventral Tegmental Area Dopaminergic Inputs to the Interpeduncular Nucleus Where Dopamine Release Encodes Motivated Exploration. eNeuro. 0282-22.2022. PMID: 36599671. ()
Tapper AR & Molas S (2020). 听Midbrain circuits of novelty processing. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 176:107323 PMID: 33053429. ()
Molas S, Zhao-Shea R, Liu L, DeGroot SR, Gardner PD, Tapper AR. (2017). 听A circuit-based mechanism underlying familiarity signaling and the preference for novelty. Nat Neurosci. 20(9):1260-1268. PMID:28714952
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