In addition to serving as department chair, I maintain active teaching and research interests in psychopharmacology and the experimental analysis of behavior.

My students and I are currently working on a project investigating the effects of abused drugs such as MDMA (ecstasy), methamphetamine and methylphenidate (Ritalin) on learning and memory in rats. We use some of the same behavioral procedures to try to determine whether some experimental compounds might be able to enhance learning and memory processes. Currently we are exploring whether drugs that act on various sub-receptors of GABA and acetylcholine systems of the brain might act as “cognitive enhancers”.

I also have interests in the field of comparative cognition: seeking the roots of human conceptual behavior in non-humans.  Graduate and undergraduate students are active collaborators in all of my research.

For more information about my research and for my class web pages please visit my web site at: http://people.uncw.edu/galizio/galizio.htm.

Select Publications

Galizio, M., Miller, L., Ferguson, A., McKinney, P. & Pitts, R. C. (2006). Olfactory repeated discrimination reversal in rats: effects of chlordiazepoxide, dizocilpine and morphine. Behavioral Neuroscience, 120, 1175-1179.

Maisto, S., Galizio, M, & Connors, G. (2008). Drug Use and Abuse: Fifth Edition. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth Press. Galizio, M., Keith, J. R., Mansfield, W. J. & Pitts, R. C. (2003). Repeated spatial acquisition: Effects of NMDA antagonists and morphine. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 11, 79-90.

Pena, T., Pitts, R. C., & Galizio, M. (2006). Identity matching-to-sample with olfactory stimuli in rats. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 85, 203-221.

Pitts, R. C., Buda, D. R., Keith, J. R., Cerutti, D. T., & Galizio, M. (2006). Chlordiazepoxide and dizocilpine, but not morphine, selectively impair acquisition under a novel repeated acquisition and performance task in rats. Psychopharmacology, 189, 135-143.