Post-Doctoral IRTA Fellow | mimi.belcher@nih.gov 
Mimi received her Bachelor’s Degree from Loyola University in New Orleans with a Major in Psychology. In 1998 she took a two-year Post-Baccalaureate Fellow position at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she worked under Dr. Mortimer Mishkin investigating the role of the hippocampal formation in various forms of memory. She received her PhD in Biological Sciences in 2007 from the University of California, Irvine under the mentorship of John F. Marshall, and her thesis work explored the enduring cognitive and neurochemical sequelae resulting from methamphetamine exposure. After a one-year post-doc in sunny Santa Barbara with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project (headed by Michael Gazzaniga), she returned to the bench in August 2009 to work with Dr. Stein’s group investigating animal models of drug abuse.
Research Interests:
- Awake and anesthetized brain imaging of nonhuman primate models of psychostimulant addiction
- Functional imaging of cocaine-induced changes in brain circuitry implicated in addiction
- Drug-induced alterations in cognitive flexibility and reward-seeking behavior
Publications:
- Izquierdo AI, Belcher AM, Scott L, Cazares VA, Chen J, O’Dell SJ, Malvaez M, Wu T, Marshall JF (2010). Reversal-specific learning impairments after a binge regimen of methamphetamine in rats: Possible involvement of striatal dopamine. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35(2): 505-14.
- Belcher AM, Sinnott-Armstrong WP (2009). Neurolaw. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(1): 18-22.
- Belcher AM, O’Dell SJ, Marshall JF (2009). Long-term changes in dopamine-stimulated gene expression after single-day methamphetamine exposure. Synapse, 63(5): 403-12.
- Belcher AM, Feinstein EM, O’Dell SJ, Marshall JF (2008). Methamphetamine influences on recognition memory: comparison of escalating and single-day dosing regimens. Neuropsychopharmacology, 33(6): 1453-63.
- Marshall JF, Belcher AM, Feinstein EM and O’Dell SJ (2007). Methamphetamine-induced neural and cognitive changes in rodents. Addiction, 102 (1): 61-69.
- Belcher AM, O'Dell SJ and Marshall JF (2006). A sensitizing regimen of methamphetamine causes impairments in a novelty preference task of object recognition. Behavioural Brain Research, 170(1):167-72.
- Belcher AM, Harrington RA, Malkova L and Mishkin M. (2006). Effects of hippocampal lesions on the monkey's ability to learn large sets of object-place associations. Hippocampus, 16(4): 361-7.
- Belcher AM, O'Dell SJ and Marshall JF (2005). Impaired object recognition memory following methamphetamine, but not p-chloroamphetamine- or d-amphetamine-induced neurotoxicity. Neuropsychopharmacology, 30(11):2026-34.
- Cahill LF, Gorski L, Belcher AM and Huynh Q. (2004). The influence of sex versus sex-related traits on long-term recall for gist and detail from an emotional story. Consciousness and Cognition 13(2): 391-400.