Bianca Jones Marlin

Bianca Jones Marlin

Research Interest

Research Summary

The Marlin Lab investigates the relationship between the innate and the learned. We study transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI), or how trauma in parents affects the brain structure and sensory experience of their future offspring. Utilizing molecular genetics, behavior, and neural imaging, we aim to understand the transfer of information inherent in the neurons of the parent, through the gamete, to neurons of their offspring. Implicit in our study is that the categorical distinction between innate and learned behaviors may be fundamentally flexible. Thus, a learned behavior in the parent can essentially become an innate behavior in the offspring. Elucidating the mechanisms through which learning and emotion in one generation are transmitted not culturally, but rather biologically, will have profound implications in societal health and mental well-being.

2020 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Columbia University

2015 Ph.D., Neurobiology and Physiology, New York University

2009 B.S., Biology; B.S., Adolescent Education, St. John’s University

Stephen Cadieux - Lab Coordinator

Clara Liff - Lab Manager

Beka Stecky - Graduate Student

Valentine Andreu - Graduate Student

Will Foster - Lab Technician

Yasmine Ayman - Lab Technician

Alexis Kim - Bridge to PhD Scholar

  1. Maxwell A. Bertolero, Jordan D. Dworkin, Sophia U. David, Claudia López Lloreda, Pragya Srivastava, Jennifer Stiso, Dale Zhou, Kafui Dzirasa, Damien A. Fair, Antonia N. Kaczkurkin, Bianca J. Marlin, Daphna Shohamy, Lucina Q. Uddin, Perry Zurn, Danielle S. Bassett, Racial and ethnic imbalance in neuroscience reference lists and intersections with gender. bioRxiv (2020)
  2. Ioana Carcea, Naomi López Caraballo, Bianca J. Marlin, Rumi Ooyama, Justin S. Riceberg, Joyce M. Mendoza Navarro, Maya Opendak, Veronica E. Diaz, Luisa Schuster, Maria I. Alvarado Torres, Harper Lethin, Daniel Ramos, Jessica Minder, Sebastian L. Mendoza, Shizu Hidema, Annegret Falkner, Dayu Lin, Adam Mar, Youssef Z. Wadghiri, Katsuhiko Nishimori, Takefumi Kikusui, Kazutaka Mogi, Regina M. Sullivan, Robert C. Froemke. Oxytocin Neurons Enable Social Transmission of Maternal Behavior. bioRxiv (2019)
  3. Mariela Mitre, Thorsten M. Kranz, Bianca J. Marlin, Jennifer K. Schiavo, Hediye Erdjument-Bromage, Xinying Zhang, Jess Minder, Thomas A. Neubert, Troy A. Hackett, Moses V. Chao, Robert C. Froemke. Sex-Specific Differences in Oxytocin Receptor Expression and Function for Parental Behavior. Gender and the Genome (2017)
  4. Mariela Mitre, Bianca J. Marlin, Jennifer K. Schiavo, Egzona Morina, Samantha E. Norden, Troy A. Hackett, Chiye J. Aoki, Moses V. Chao, Robert C. Froemke. A Distributed Network for Social Cognition Enriched for Oxytocin Receptors. The Journal of Neuroscience (2016)
  5. Bianca J. Marlin, Mariela Mitre, James A. D’amour, Moses V. Chao, Robert C. Froemke. Oxytocin enables maternal behaviour by balancing cortical inhibition. Nature (2015)
  • Neuromodulation  
  • Trauma 
  • The senses