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

My students and I are currently working on a project investigating the effects of club drugs such as MDMA (ecstasy), methamphetamine and methylphenidate (Ritalin) on learning and memory in rats. We are particularly focused on exploring the possibility that drugs like MDMA may produce long-term interference with learning and complex behavior. 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 the GABA system of the brain might act as “cognitive enhancers”.

I also have interests in how children and adults learn complex concepts and also in 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., Stewart, K. & Pilgrim, C. (2004). Typicality effects in contingency-based generalized equivalence classes. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 82, 253-273.

Galizio, M. (2004). Relational Frames: Where do they come from? A comment on Barnes-Holmes and Hayes (2003). The Behavior Analyst, 27, 107-112.

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.