Howard Casey Cromwell PhD

Contact Information:
         Department of Psychology
         Psychology Building
         Bowling Green State University
         Bowling Green Ohio 43403-0232
         Email: hcc@bgsu.edu
         Phone: 419 372-9408 Fax: 419 372-6013

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. 
Then I realized who was telling me this. (Now I don't know what to think)

Emo Phillips  (American Comedian; parenthesis added)

Welcome to my webpages and please browse through them to understand what my teaching and research is all about.  I am interested in how the brain works to produce emotional and sometimes motivated behavior.  I direct the BIOLOGY OF AFFECT AND MOTIVATION LAB at Bowling Green State University.  We have a number of graduate students and undergraduates involved in the research.  The questions we address revolve around the general mystery for how the brain works and how the brain incorporates more global information- both from the organism's body and outside of the organism to produce goal-directed action.  I became interested in basic motivational and emotional properties of behavior because of the clear relationships between conserved systems between animals and how using animals to study these motivational systems could shed light on human motivation and emotion- at a level that would be understood through modern science and manipulated to benefit individuals with problems in motivation and emotion.  My background will help illuminate how these interests began and have been fostered by others.

Background and Education

BA            DEPAUW UNIVERSITY

I was a double major in Psychology and Biology at DePauw and took an even number of classes from both departments. My favorite psychology class was Human Relations taught by Professor Felix E.Goodson. My favorite biology class was Animal Behavior taught by Professor Mike Johnson (my undergraduate mentor). My senior thesis project was an investigation on the effects of alcohol ingestion on passive avoidance learning in two different mice strains (Balb/c & C57s; unpublished).

MA & PhD    UNIVERSITY  OF MICHIGAN

Graduate studies were completed in the laboratory of Dr. Kent C. Berridge in the Biopsychology Program at UM. Based on his earlier work that large lesions of the basal ganglia altered action sequencing in both taste and grooming, we started to examine the effects of small lesions to different portions of the basal ganglia, focusing on the dorsal and ventral striatum and the pallidal regions. We found distinct differences following lesions to the different subregions. My dissertation entitled " Functional Heterogeneity of Striatopallidal Subregions" has since been published in several research articles. Here are a few of the references for this work:

We examined rodent fixed action patterns used for primary responses to unconditioned stimuli (natural rewarding stimuli) and during complex action sequences during grooming.  Here are examples of the rodent behavior we examined in detail and used to delineate striatal subregions involved in particular higher motor functions:

Aversive taste reactions such as paw treading and fixed action patterns embedded within grooming bouts. Striatal lesions to ventral pallidal areas led to enhanced aversive taste reactions to palatable stimuli while lesions to the anterior dorsolateral striatal selectively decreased grooming chain completion.  Please read the articles below for more information:

grooming chain completion.  Please read the articles below for more information:

Where does damage lead to enhanced food aversion: the ventral pallidum/substantia innominata or lateral hypothalamus  Cromwell HC, Berridge KC. Brain Res. 1993 Oct 8;624(1-2):1-10. Erratum in: Brain Res 1994 Apr 11;642(1-2):355.

Mapping of globus pallidus and ventral pallidum lesions that produce hyperkinetic treading. Cromwell HC, Berridge KC. Brain Res. 1994 Dec 30;668(1-2):16-29.

Motivational-sensorimotor interaction controls aphagia and exaggerated treading after striatopallidal lesions.  Berridge KC, Cromwell HC. Behav Neurosci. 1990 Oct;104(5):778-95.

Implementation of action sequences by a neostriatal site: a lesion mapping study of grooming syntax. Cromwell HC, Berridge KC. J Neurosci. 1996 May 15;16(10):3444-58.

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NIMH Post-doctoral Trainee   UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

The traineeship focused on neurophysiology and basal ganglia function. I worked in Nat Buchwald/Micheal Levine laboratory at the Mental Retardation Research Center. This group completed the initial functional electrophysiological recordings of basal ganglia neurons and published widely on the neurophysiology of this system. My work included current clamp recordings of basal ganglia neurons investigating effects of cortical lesions and examining the interactions of neurotransmitter systems on the medium spiny cell synaptic responses.

Neocortical damage alters synaptic responses of neostriatal neurons in vitro.Cromwell HC, Levine MS. Neuroscience. 1996 Nov;75(2):361-72.

Modulatory actions of dopamine on NMDA receptor-mediated responses are reduced in D1A-deficient mutant mice.Levine MS, Altemus KL, Cepeda C, Cromwell HC, Crawford C, Ariano MA, Drago J, Sibley DR, Westphal H. J Neurosci. 1996 Sep 15;16(18):5870-82.

Decortication decreases paired-pulse facilitation in the neostriatal slice of the rat.Cromwell HC, Buchwald NA, Levine MS. Neurosci Lett. 1995 Jun 16;192(3):213-7..

National Science Foundation International Fellow  Université de Fribourg

Working in Professor Wolfram Schultz's laboratory at the Institute of Physiology, we examined the influences of varying reward outcomes on striatal activity related to the expectation of the reward and to the goal-directed action used to obtain the outcome.

Relative reward processing in primate striatum. Cromwell HC, Hassani OK, Schultz W. Exp Brain Res. 2005 May;162(4):520-5. Epub 2005 Mar 8.

Effects of expectations for different reward magnitudes on neuronal activity in primate striatum. Cromwell HC, Schultz W. J Neurophysiol. 2003 May;89(5):2823-38. Epub 2003 Jan 29.

Behavioral reactions reflecting differential reward expectations in monkeys. Watanabe M, Cromwell HC, Tremblay L, Hollerman JR, Hikosaka K, Schultz W. Exp Brain Res. 2001 Oct;140(4):511-8.

Influence of expectation of different rewards on behavior-related neuronal activity in the striatum. Hassani OK, Cromwell HC, Schultz W. J Neurophysiol. 2001 Jun;85(6):2477-89.

Hobbies include traveling, playing sports (badminton with Coach Simpson at the BGSU Recreation Center) and family time.  Music is big in the group as we have piano, violin and clarinet music every evening with many concerts, recitals and related events (camps)..throughout the year.
Some photos of these terrific events:

Wood County Fair is always a big hit!