Our lab study neural circuits underlying motivated behaviors and how maladaptive change in these circuits causing neuropsychiatric disorders. We currently focuse on pain and addiction. Both conditions trigger highly motivated behaviors, and the transition to chronic pain and to compulsive drug use involves maladaptive changes of the underlying neuronal circuitry.
Neuroal circuits mediating opioid addiction:
We established the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) to nucleus accumbens (NAc) pathway as a promising target for treating opioid addiction (Zhu et al., 2016), and revealed the PVT’s role in tracking the dynamics of behavioral relevance and gating associative learning (Zhu et al., 2018). Using brainwide activity mapping, we identifed a distributed neuronetwork including 23 brain regions that might involve in storing drug-associated memory (Keyes et al, 2020). Ongoing work in the lab is to examining how
Neuroal circuits underlying descending pain modulation:
We developed a battery of viral, genetic and imaging tools and gained robust access of the mu-opioid receptor expressing spinal cord projecting neurons in the rostromiddel medulla (RVM). We found that these neurons has limited contirbution to nociception in normal mice but is essential for the initiation and maintenance of nerve injury induced chronic pain. We are profiling nerve injury caused gene expression changes in these neurons with the goal to identify key molecular plays that engages these neurons in chronic pain. Based on our finding, we will develop gene therapy reagents and small molecues to treat chronic pain.
