Pleasure to Join the Community Steemit! 

My hope is that I can contribute to and help improve the Steemit Project by adding my unique perspective and background! I will blog about the many passions of my life which range from astrophysics, politics, neuroscience, ADHD, addiction, and more. I've been looking for a platform for blogging and I think I've found one here at Steemit!

I am very excited and look forward to the great Steemit experiment!

(For those who are interested here is some of my educational background):

Valentino Garcia, M.D., attended college at the University of Washington in Seattle where he earned his Bachelor's degree in psychology and also worked in a research laboratory focusing on neurobiology and behavior. He went on to do research under the current National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Chief of Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology before graduating from medical school and earning his Doctor of Medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Afterwards, he received additional training in psychiatry at the University of California Los Angeles. Dr. Garcia is also trained and certified by the American Society of Addiction Medicine for the medication-assisted treatment of opioid addiction.

Publications

Lehman, S.J., Garcia, V.C. & Kim, J.J. (2006). Exposure to Acute Uncontrollable Stress Selectively Impairs Contextual Fear Conditioning in Rats. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 32: 811.2

Jones, L.K, Yoon, T., Garcia, V.C., & Kim, J.J. (2007). Auditory Cortex is Necessary for Evaluating Predictive Value of Tone CS in Fear Conditioning. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 33: 529.22

Yoon, T., Garcia, V.C., & Kim, J.J. (2007). Effects of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Lesions on Stress-induced modulation of hippocampal LTP and Spatial Memory. Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 33: 839.16

Cate Speake, Bob Morrison, Patricia de la Vega, Christopher Armour, Bess Sorenson, Jingyang Chen, Marissa Vignali, Kun-lin Lee, Lindsay Holladay, Valentino Garcia, Andrew Ishizuka, Yogender Khasa, Laure Juompan, Isaac Chalom, Jackie Williams, Michal Fried, Urszula Krzych, Patrick E. Duffy (2009). American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene-58th annual meeting. P. falciparum Liver Stage Antigen Discovery.

Cate Speake, Bob Morrison, Patricia de la Vega, Christopher Armour, Bess Sorensen, Yogender Khasa, Jingyang Chen, Marissa Vignali, Lindsay Holladay, Valentino Garcia, Andrew Ishizuka, Matt Biery, John Castle, Chris Raymond, Laure Juompan, Isaac Chalom, Jackie Williams, D. Gray Hepper, Michal Fried, Urszula Krzych, Patrick E. Duffy (2010). Malaria: New Approaches to Understanding Host-Parasite Interactions (Keystone Symposia Global Health Series). Apr. 11-16, 2010. Novel Liver Stage Antigens Can Protect Against P. yoelii. 

Olivia Finney, Cate Speake, Valentino Garcia, Lindsay Holladay, Tony Getz, Urszula Krzych, Patrick Duffy (2010). Seattle Parasitology Conference. Comparison of Immune Responses to Protective and Non-Protective DNA Vaccines Using Novel Liver Stage Antigens. ​

One Pending Publication (July 2016)