I (Mike Lisieski) am an undergraduate student in Psychology and Pharmacology.  I plan to pursue an M.D. and a Ph.D in behavioral neuroscience after finishing my undergraduate degrees.  Cephalove is a project I started in May 2010 to make science related to cephalopods more accessible on the internet.  Conveniently enough, it also gives me something entertaining to do that (hopefully) keeps my mind sharp.  My background is in neuroscience and psychology, and so I tend to focus on these topics when discussing cephalopod research – though I try to give all disciplines a fair shake.  I blogged for a few months at blogger, and then moved to the Southern Fried Science network, where I’m looking forward to blogging in a more visible location!

Cephalopods are a somewhat tangential research interest to me; I am generally interested in neuroscience and psychology, and more specifically in the neuroscience and psychology of psychoactive drugs. My first introduction to cephalopods in scientific research was through Fioritio and Scotto’s 1992 paper on observational learning in O. vulgaris, after which I discovered J. Z. Young’s work on cephalopod neuroanatomy. After casually reading these, and a visit to the Pittsburgh Zoo where I saw a beautiful O. dofleini crawling about its tank, I decided to start this blog. Prior to writing this blog, I have very little background in marine biology per se, although I have been interested in biology as long as I can remember.