Primate Research at Carleton – Carleton College

Haagen Dasz, contemplating her choices. (2019, Photo by Chris Leppink-Shands)

Haagen Dasz and Forte.

Welcome to the Primate Cognition Lab.

We are entering our 24th year of working with and getting to know the tamarins at Carleton College with…

32 monkeys that have spanned over three generations,
about 218 undergraduate collaborators to date (2021),
Five NIH grants, totaling $1.7 million dollars and
more than 2 dozen publications and presentations.

During COVID times, this is how we look before working with the tamarins. We don’t want to bring anything in to them that would make them sick. The summer 2021 research crew and Julie are celebrating below, and farther below, the 2020-2021 student researchers are pictured. We are a very hard-working and resilient group!

Summer Research Team 2021 — Summer Research Team 2021 from left to right: Jamie Kortanek (2022), Luis Alvarez (2022), Ana Knighten (5th year intern), Shannon Liu (2023), Lydia Boyum (2022), Julie Neiworth (faculty).

Current 2020-2021 Student Researchers — Academic year 2020-2021 researchers from left to right: Emily Spain, Maris Daleo, Elena Morales-Grahl, Maia Danks.

Summer Research Dinner, July, 2022. From Left to Right: John Garay Hernandez (2024), Maddy LoRusso (2023), Suhani Thandi (2023), Julie Neiworth (Faculty), Ellie Leon-Moffly (2023), Maddie Thall (2022, 5th year intern), Ana Knighten (2020, 5th year intern).

Summer Research Dinner, July 2021. Starting from top of table, clockwise: Julie Neiworth (faculty), Jamie Kortanek, Lydia Boyum, Luis Alvarez, Shannon Lui, Ana Knighten (5th year intern, 2020).

Senior Lab Dinner 2019: Christopher Kwon, Katie Hauge, Julie Neiworth, Chris Leppink-Shands, Will Lanzillo, Gifty Amos Nwankwo

Oct 2018 MidBrains Neuroscience Conference. Winners of “most outstanding poster”. Christopher Kwon, Chris Leppink-Shands, Max Pope, Colin Liphart, Gifty Amos Nwankwo.

Psychonomics Conference, Vancouver, Nov 2017. Cathy (Sijin) Chen.

MidBrains Poster Presentation, Oct 2017. Katie Eppard, Isabelle Rieth, Sophie Bokor, Marshall Ma, Sarah Min, Abby Sharer, Christopher Kwon.

The friendly tamarin faces of the Primate Cognition Lab

The Latest in Scholarship! See the Presentation!

Neiworth presented her research at the International Primatological Society virtually, Jan 14, 2022. See the monkeys work in a variety of cognitive tasks in this 14-minute presentation!

Julie received an NIH AREA grant (2021-2024; see NIH RePORTER) to continue to support the monkey cognitive studies and to study their brain tissue for signs of Alzheimer’s Disease and correlates of cognitive decline once they pass on naturally. See the Carleton Grants Page description here. NIH Grant awarded to Neiworth.

Read about our Research, as covered by USA Today, Sept 29, 2012.

Welcome to the primate cognition lab at Carleton College.

This program is supervised by Julie Neiworth, Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of the Natural Sciences and Psychology.

View a list of recent publications.

This research is sponsored in part by grants from the National Institute of Health, by summer research support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, by a Eugster Fellow Award, and by Carleton College.

Current grant: NIH AREA grant 2R15AG051940-02, Longitudinal Cognitive Behavioral Testing and Immunohistochemical Assessment of Alzheimer’s Disease Markers, Immune Response, Neurogenesis, and Cell Loss in a Natural Aging Primate Model, $438,067, Feb 2021 – Jan 2024.

lab dinner 2017

Summer lab dinner, 2017. Isabelle Rieth, Katie Eppard, Abby Sharer, Marshall Ma, Katie Hauge, Christopher Kwon.

summer monkey lab 2017

Monkey lab 2017. Abby Sharer, Katie Eppard, Isabelle Rieth, Julie Neiworth, Christopher Kwon, Katie Hauge, Alexandria Carlsen, Claire Hobbie, Marshall Ma.