Cole Vonder Haar, PhD

January 2021 - Cole Vonder Haar, PhD

Cole joined Ohio State and CBI January 7, 2021, from the Department of Psychology at West Virginia University. Cole is interested in finding viable treatment options, both behavioral and pharmacological, for the long-term dysfunction that occurs as a result of TBI and he is looking forward to developing new collaborations at Ohio State in the CBI and Neuroscience Research Institute communities. Describe your research and why you are passionate about this topic? My research focuses on the modeling and treatment of long-term psychiatric-like deficits after traumatic brain injury. I use a strong behavioral neuroscience approach to back-translate human neuropsychiatric assessments to our rats as well as tasks which are highly selective to specific behavioral deficits (e.g., impulsivity). While deficits in attention, decision-making, and impulsivity are well-recognized at the patient level, there is relatively little research focusing on these problems in animal models. Therefore, my lab focuses in on these behavioral aspects alongside pathophysiological assessments. What should people know about your research? The avenues of research that I am currently pursuing are: dopaminergic dysfunction after TBI, neuromodulation as a treatment for TBI, neuroinflammatory contributions to psychiatric-like impairments, and developing appropriate behavioral assays for pig TBI models. For folks interested in collaboration, my lab will be capable of a full suite of rat behaviors (e.g., mazes, motor assays, etc) with a particular emphasis on the long-term psychiatric (operant) assays. If enough people are interested, we may expand our operant assays into mice through collaboration with Dr. Kokiko-Cochran. We are also able to do basic molecular biology assays (IHC, WB, ELISA). What do you like to do in your free time? Outside of the lab, I enjoy videogames (been enjoying the Nintendo Switch quite a bit), hiking and camping, and home renovation projects. After a move from very hilly West Virginia, I am hoping to get back into biking given the abundance of flat terrain in Columbus.