Aitana Allen-Perez is an undergraduate student studying Physiological Science at UCLA. She has always been fascinated with exploring the holistic effects of neurological aspects, including signal transmissions, cellular communication, and neurological disorders. She is currently working in the De Biase lab, where she assists postdoctoral fellow, Daniel Gray. Her lab focuses on microglia, which are brain immune cells that regulate neuron function through synapse engulfment and extracellular matrix remodeling, and how microglia in regions of the basal ganglia dopamine system express early inflammatory phenotypes. Through the De Biase lab, Aitana assists with cognitive training on mice that engages dopamine-dependent aspects of behavior to investigate beneficial effects on brain function. Her role is to also help collect and analyze data from these reward-based behavioral trainings to examine the impact on microglia, extracellular matrix, and synapse properties in the brain’s dopamine system. In addition to handling mice, she slices brain sections that are then immunohistochemically stained in order to visualize microglia, neuronal, synaptic, and ECM structures with confocal microscopy. Aitana would like to thank Dr. De Biase and her mentor, Daniel Gray, for giving her this opportunity to engage in undergraduate research. She would also like to thank the CARE Fellows Program for their continued support.