2025 Lab Highlights

April 2025

The McHenry Lab represents Duke University at the 2025 Triangle SfN Conference.

Olivia presents her poster, “Illuminating the Behavioral and Neural Representations of Diverse Intra-Group and Social State Dynamics in Female Mice.”

Erika presents her poster, “Tracking Dynamic Social Phenotypes Resulting from Shank3 Deficiency in Male and Female Mouse Groups from Adolescence Through Adulthood.”

March 2025

Morgan successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation entitled, “Temperament as a Window to Dog’s Past and Future: Individual Differences in Behavior and Physiology Across the Lifespan.” Co-advised by Dr. Jenna McHenry and Dr. Brian Hare.

Congrats, Dr. Ferrans!

January 2025

The McHenry Lab travels to Lake Tahoe, California, for the 2025 Winter Conference on Brain Research, https://winterbrain.org/.

2024 Lab Highlights

November 2024

Happy Birthday, Erika!

October 2024

Fall lab outing. Pumpkin carving with goats. The goats helped!

Lab Journal Club Outside:

A dog and dog-themed cup cakes in theme with a dog publication.

Happy Birthday, Olivia!

September 2024

Mia Goodson joins the lab as research associate. Welcome Mia! 

Olivia presents her research at the annual Duke Neurobiology Retreat at Wrightsville Beach, NC!

August 2024

Erika Blaine joins the lab as research associate. Welcome Erika! 

July 2024

Jenna and Morgan travel to the University of Washington, Seattle for the annual Canine Science Society Meeting, https://www.caninesciencesociety.org.

Morgan presents her talk entitled “Canine Social Preferences Across the Lifespan.” 

May 2024

The lab hosts a bittersweet going away party for Polar, a service dog-in-training for Canine Companions who has been trained by our graduate student, Morgan. Polar was part of our research as well in collaboration with the Duke Canine Cognition Center/Puppy Kindergarten (https://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/duke-puppy-kindergarten).  We celebrate and honor Polar with a walk through the Duke Gardens and lots of yummy treats and toys!

April 2024

Olivia Timmermans, 1st year Duke graduate student is awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) from the National Science Foundation, https://www.nsfgrfp.org. Her award is entitled “Illuminating the neural and behavioral representations of intergroup social ties in mice.”

Congrats, Olivia!

February 2024

Polar, service dog in training, hard at work

January 2024

The McHenry lab hosts a Spring Semester Duke Muser (https://muser.duke.edu) research project entitled “Illuminating social behavior phenotypes using machine learning.”