WATCH: Nikki Crowley discusses neuroscience of risk and decision making

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — “Neuroscience is a playground that doesn't exist elsewhere; we come together, we work together, we solve problems together across disciplines in a way that doesn't happen outside of Penn State,” said Nikki Crowley, Huck Early Career Chair in Neurobiology and Neural Engineering, director of the Neuroscience Institute and assistant professor of biology, during a recent talk at The Village at Penn State, a continuing care retirement community. The talk was part of the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State's Healthy Aging Community Lecture Series. 
 
In her presentation, titled “Healthy Aging Lecture: Risky Business — Neural Navigation of Decision Making,” Crowley discussed her work surrounding the neuroscience of risk and decision making. In her lab, she studies neuropeptides — signaling molecules that influence neural activity or functioning — and wants to understand how “neuropeptides can change our propensity to take risk.
 
As the director of the Neuroscience Institute, Crowley collaborates across colleges with many faculty who work in the neuroscience space and on key areas of focus at the University. 
 
“At Penn State, we have over 100 faculty that do neuroscience work and over 50 graduate students, which doesn’t count the staff and technicians that work in this space,” Crowley said. “Penn State is really good at looking at brain-body connections, complex behaviors and emotions and making sure that we're doing cutting-edge physiology that matters for human health. We are making discoveries that matter for the human experience.”
 
Those discoveries will be showcased this summer, when Penn State hosts the fourth annual Big Ten Neuroscience Annual Meeting July 21-22, which will follow the theme: “WE ARE Building Flourishing Brains.”