Synaptic abnormality is an important pathologic feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and responsible for various behavioral defects in these neurodevelopmental disorders. Microglia are the major immune cells in the brain and also play an import…
Increasing loss of structure and function of neurons and decline in cognitive function is commonly seen during the progression of neurologic diseases, although the causes and initial symptoms of individual diseases are distinct. This observation sugge…
Despite ample behavioral evidence of atypical facial emotion processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the neural underpinnings of such behavioral heterogeneities remain unclear. Here, I have used brain-tissue mapped artificial ne…
Visual cortex organization is highly consistent across individuals. But to what degree does this consistency depend on life experience, in particular sensory experience? In this study, we asked whether visual cortex reorganization in congenital blindn…
Anxiety disorders are debilitating psychiatric diseases that affect ~16% of the world’s population. Although it has been proposed that the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) plays a role in anxiety, the molecular and circuit mechanisms through whic…
The high sensitivity of night vision requires that rod photoreceptors reliably and reproducibly signal the absorption of single photons, a process that depends on tight regulation of intracellular cGMP concentration through the phototransduction casca…
Failure of CNS neurons to mount a significant growth response after trauma contributes to chronic functional deficits after spinal cord injury. Activator and repressor screening of embryonic cortical neurons and retinal ganglion cells in vitro and tra…
Malfunctioning synaptic plasticity is one of the major mechanisms contributing to the development of chronic pain. We studied spike-timing dependent depression (tLTD) in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of male mice, a brain region involved in proc…