Marina Cuello
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I am from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I finished my BSc degree in Psychology at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in July 2006. My general research interests involve animal behaviour and its psychological and biological bases, specially the mechanisms and processes involved in emotions, incentive relativity, and decision making.
My research experience started in 2004, working as a lab auxiliary in the Applied and Experimental Psychology Group at the Medical Research Institute “Alfredo Lanari” (Buenos Aires, Argentina). There, I did research on the interaction between diverse components of male rats’ copulation and anxiety-related behaviours.
In 2005, still as undergraduate, I obtained a Buenos Aires University scholarship to develop a one-year research project studying the effects of environmental enrichment upon cognitive and emotional functioning, and hippocampal plasticity in Wistar rats at the Faculty of Psychology.
I moved to Oxford in 2006, as soon as I finished my degree. Professor Alex Kacelnik welcomed me in the Behavioural Ecology Research Group (BERG). Here, I have had the chance to improve my English, to acquire further research experience before starting a PhD degree, and, more important, to be in contact with first-line Psychology and Zoology researchers. My research in Oxford involves the study of incentive relativity and decision making in European starlings. For instance, I studied the role of information on the successive negative contrast effect, and also the effects of surprising reward shifts on risky and impulsive choices. In the future, I’m planning to further study incentive relativity effects, but this time on human decision making.
Overall, I’m really grateful to everyone in BERG for making me feel as part of the team; it has truly been an invaluable and enriching experience.