Three young Faculty
We hereby announce the Neuroseminar with three young Faculty members from the Department of Neuroscience.
Giacomo Sitzia (post-doc Kiehn Lab)
“Basal ganglia output control of brainstem locomotor circuits”
Content: Locomotion depends on coordinated activity across multiple brain regions. I identified a population of neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) that projects to the caudal pedunculopontine nucleus (cPPN), a key center for initiating and controlling movement. Optogenetic activation of these STN→cPPN neurons reliably induced forward locomotion, even in mice rendered akinetic by dopamine blockade. These findings suggest that cPPN-projecting STN neurons promote movement and may represent a promising target for alleviating locomotor deficits in Parkinson’s disease.
Zoltan K. Varga (post-doc, Kermen Lab)
“Stress experience-dependent mechanisms of anxiety regulation”
Content: The serotonergic theory of anxiety has been both supported and contradicted by numerous studies. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how short-term and long-term stress experiences influence the involvement of serotonergic mechanisms in the emergence of anxious behavior. By characterizing the neural background of these stress-induced states - marked by serotonergic activity - we can gain new insights into how current serotonergic therapies might be improved and how treatment-resistant conditions could be better addressed.
Grace A. Houser (post-doc, Berg lab)
“The Projectome”
Content: By generating high-resolution, whole-neuraxis wiring diagrams in mice with 3D light-sheet microscopy at single-axon resolution, we can extract the structural principles that describe wiring patterns between the brain and spinal cord in a detail, scale and complexity that is not feasible with other imaging modalities.