Click in to the UR Research Exposition 2020 (Natural Sciences category) to see Apoorva and other UR undergraduates show their work: https://www.rochester.edu/college/ugresearch/events/expo.html
Apoorva's work, which she has pursued over 3 semesters, is entitled 'Pregenual and Subgenual Anterior Cingulate regulate Emotional Processing together in Specific Amygdala Subdivisions'. The amygdala codes the emotional relevance of sensory cues, and is modulated by feedback from the prefrontal cortex. Specifically, separate nodes of the prefrontal cortex anterior cingulate (ACC) modulate 'salience' detection (of novel, and potentially biologic stimuli) and 'social monitoring' (detection of others' actions), respectively. Apoorva's data show that while the ACC's 'salience' projection targets broad regions of the amygdala, the 'social monitoring' node projects to more focused regions of the amygdala, overlapping 'salience' afferents in these regions. Her data suggest that there are sub-circuits in the amygdala devoted to processing salient social stimuli.