Research Interest:

• The Neurobiology of drug addiction: Neurophysiological and behavioural mechanisms associated with addiction.

• The Neuroendocrine regulation of oestrogen and testosterone on learning and memory paradigms.

• The differential and neuroprotective effects of oestrogen on cognition in aging.

Selected Publications

Young Lauriann E., L. C. Benjamin and Ronald E. Young. " Gender and estrous cycle variations on avoidance learning : Effects of low dose amphetamine and cocaine." Alzheimer's Disease Review. 3.1 (1998): 67-72.

Young Lauriann E and Samuel R. Wray. Learning dysfunction produced by mesolimbic deficits." Alzheimer's Disease Review. 3.1 (1998): 73-78.

Benjamin L C., Lauriann E Young and Ronald E. Young. "Dopaminergic lesioning of the nucleus accumbens potentiates learned helplessness." Alzheimer's Disease Review. 4 (1999): 29-31

Parshad, Omkar., Lauriann E. Young and Ronald Young. " Medicinal plants containing sedative activity with special reference to Neem (Azadirachta indica, A Juss)." Brain, Function, Behaviour, Drugs and Disease: Neuroscience in the Caribbean. Editors: Samuel R. Wray, N. Hernandez and Omkar Parshad. Kingston, Jamaica: Medical and Scientific Development Trust and Caribbean Brain research Organization, 2000. 78-85.

Young Lauriann E., and L. C. Benjamin. " Estrogen and progesterone differentially modulte nucleus accumbens dopamine : genomic effects on avoidance learning and memory" [Abstract]. The physiologist 44.4 (2001): 272.

Chin-Quee, Karis P and Lauriann Young. " Stress, marijuana and addiction ian an animal model." West Indian Medical Journal. 50.5 (2001): 26.

Young Lauriann E., and L. C. Benjamin. " Accumbens modulation of associative learning varies with the estrous cycle, combined estrogen and progesterone treatment and dopaminergic agonists." [Abstract]. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 28 (2002): 379.15

Graduate students

• Karis Chin-Quee (Research Fellow)
• Kencliffe Palmer