Research in my lab focuses on identifying the causal mechanisms – circuits, neural activity patterns, and molecules – that drive negative-valence behavior, with the long-term goal of discovering new treatment targets for neuropsychiatric illness. We use all-optical read-write approaches across limbic and reward regions to study how inhibitory microcircuits regulate the output neurons that drive affective behavior, and how diffuse neuromodulatory and neuropeptidergic signals are refined to produce circuit-specific behavioral effects. Cutting across these efforts is an investment in tool development aimed at causally implicating specific cells, circuits, and receptors in affective behavior, with the goal of making circuit-level interrogation routinely compatible with the pharmacological and molecular precision needed to identify new therapeutic targets.
1244 McGaugh Hall
Irvine, California 92697
United States