In grade nine, she conducted an experiment in her house, using mice as a model organism to probe sex based differences in learning.
[1] Cardin pursued her undergraduate degree at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where she majored in biological sciences and started conducting research in a real laboratory, instead of her own home.
[2] At Cornell, Cardin joined the lab of Timothy J. DeVoogd, where she studied learning in songbirds and mapped out the morphology and anatomy of the high vocal center (HVC) in female canaries.
[3] They describe their discovery of neurons projecting to AreaX that receive direct auditory input to support the function of the HVC in song learning.
[4] Once at UPenn, Cardin rotated in the lab of Ted Abel, a new faculty member at the time, studying the molecular basis of memory storage.
[5] During her rotation, Cardin helped Abel write a review paper exploring the memory suppression both in invertebrates and vertebrates.
[4] During her graduate studies, Cardin explored the variability in sensory processing across brain states, such as during sedation, wakefulness, and high arousal.
[11] Cardin and her team performed intracellular recordings in the cat primary visual cortex and found that gain modulation is determined instantaneously by the rapidly changing sensory context and the dynamics of synaptic activation.
[12] Following this paper, Cardin and a team of researchers developed a protocol to both stimulate neurons optogenetically and record evoked activity in vivo using electrophysiological preparations.
[14] In addition to her roles in the lab, Cardin is on the Brain Science Mindscope Advisory Council as an Allen Institute Advisor[15] and has been integrally involved in the organization and planning of the COSYNE Conference since 2009.