Biography
Allie is an MD-PhD student from Ridgefield, Connecticut who graduated from Northeastern University with a B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience. During her time in Boston, she spent 3 years working as a Mental Health Associate at Arbour Hospital, where she developed an interest in researching the neural circuits involved in mental health and behavior. To that end, she a year working in Ziv Williams' lab at Massachusetts General Hospital exploring social behavior in mice, as well as a year working in Heather Brenhouse's lab at Northeastern studying sex differences in the Acoustic Startle Response in rats after early life stress. Allie then returned to Connecticut and spent 2 years working as a Postgraduate Associate in Jane Taylor's lab at Yale School of Medicine. There, she conducted various projects exploring social behavior in a paired cooperative decision-making task in rats. Mainly, she used fiber photometry to measure neural activity during social cooperation and also examined how early life stress influences cooperative behavior.
While not in lab or clinic, Allie can be found line dancing, thrifting for funky earrings, and drinking yerba mate.
Areas of Interest
During her training, Allie is interested in studying how the developing brain responds to stress, and exploring tools to measure and manipulate the activity of neural circuits controlling complex behaviors.
Her clinical interests are in psychiatry and pediatrics.
Education
- BS 2023, Northeastern University, Behavioral Neuroscience
Affiliation and Activities
- Virtual Host Coordinator of MD/PhD Student Association (2026-2027)
Publications
- R. Baez-Mendoza, F. Bounni, B. Sanders, S. W. Li, C. T. Short, R. A. Cauchon*, Z. M. Williams. Single-neuronal basis for social group influence and conformity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. (Nature Neuroscience, Accepted)
Contact
https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneeacauchon212/