Nitish Patel won two highly competitive awards from UCLA, the Graduate Research Mentorship award and the Graduate Summer Research Mentorship award. Congratulations Nitish!

The lab received a 1.4 million dollar grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to study brain circuits that control food-seeking!

Ellie Hilgert wins “Outstanding poster award” at the 2024 UCLA Undergraduate Neuroscience Poster Presentation. Congratulations Ellie!

Congratulations Fernando for winning the UCLA/NIDDK NIH Lift-up scholar award!

Here, Reis et al show that activity of vgat periaqueductal gray cells is necessary and sufficient for food seeking. We also show that these cells affect foraging by recruiting the zona incerta. Activation of this circuit causes eating even in satiated mice, while inhibiting it decreases feeding even in very hungry mice. See our new paper in Nature Communications! [pdf]

Congratulations for Nitish Patel for wining the Dean’s Scholar award!

The Suthana lab collaborated with us to show signatures of neural activity in humans with and without PTSD. Read the paper in Nature Communications here! [pdf]

Here, in a collaboration with our lab, Fetcho et al study social interaction circuits. Read the paper in Nature Communications! [pdf]

Graduate student Blake Miranda wins a NSF-GRFP fellowship from the National Science Foundation! Congratulations Blake!

Our paper showing how the ventromedial hypothalamus is affected by innate and learned defensive behaviors was published in the European Journal of Neuroscience! [pdf]

Read our new review on Neuropharmacology about the role of the periaqueductal gray in innate and learned defensive behaviors! [pdf]

Congratulations to Dr. Reis on winning this prestigious award from the Semel Institute to support his research on neural circuits controlling feeding!

Congratulations for Dr. Reis on winning a 2nd NARSAD fellowship, this time to study midbrain circuits that control compulsive eating!

Here Schuette et al show that compared to glutamatergic cells, GABAergic cells in hippocampal area CA1 are less affected by contextual changes to the environment, such as context rotation or re-sizing. [pdf]

The first two PhD students in the lab did their thesis defense a few weeks apart from each other. Congratulations Dr. La-Vu and Dr. Schuette!!

Here La-Vu et al report in the journal eLife that a small population of genetically-identified cholecystokinin-expressing cells in the ventral and lateral periaqueductal gray that cause escape, even though pan-neuronal activation of this region causes freezing, not escape. This data show that in addition to the anatomical columnar architecture of the PAG, the molecular identity of PAG cells may confer an additional axis of functional organization, revealing unexplored functional heterogeneity. [pdf]

Avi will serve as a member of the Pathophysiological Basis of Mental Disorders and Addictions (PMDA) study section at the National Institute of Mental Health to review grant applications for 4 years.

Graduate student Peter Schuette was selected to receive the 2022 Samuel Eiduson Student Lecture Award.

PhD student, Anita Torossian, is awarded a F31 fellowship award to fund 3 years of her PhD work.

Our new paper in eLife shows that a hypothalamic projection to the dorsal periaqueductal gray controls escape velocity during exposure to both innate and conditioned threats! Read the paper here.

Graduate student Peter Schuette and lab alumni Lilly Lin designed a neuronal ladder image that won the 2021 UCLA Science is Art competition. You can see the image here. The neuronal ladder represents the two pathways (from hypothalamus to thalamus and from hypothalamus to brainstem) that must be co-active to allow escape from a thermal high temperature threat, as shown in our recent paper in Neuron.

Avi discusses mental health in Good Grit Magazine. Click here  to read the article.

Graduate student Peter, who already won an NSF award won the UCLA Excellence in Life Sciences Award. Only one award was given for all of Life Sciences at UCLA, which covers topics as diverse as botany and cancer biology. Peter won for his contributions to our recent paper in Neuron. Congratulations Peter!!

We published a paper in the journal eLife showing that brainstem periaqueductal gray cells encode threat avoidance and threat approach behavioral states. Read this open-access paper here.

Here we show that brainstem cells in the periaqueductal gray region encode a variety of metrics related to threats, including angular offset between mouse head direction and threat and distance to threat. Read this paper in the Journal of Neuroscience website here.

Weisheng and Peter published a major work in the journal Neuron! Here we show how spatial navigation skills and escape are coordinated to produce versatile flight from threat using optimal escape routes! Read it here [pdf]

Our collaboration with UCLA’s Prof. Stephanie Correa has been published in Nature Communications! This work reveals how hypothalamic cells control torpor in mice [pdf]

Avi is interviewed in the “Humans and Science” portion of SciSection. Read the interview here.

Read the interview here.

We are excited to start our lab in the Psychology Department, and look forward to work with our colleagues in UCLA’s neuroscience community.

Our paper showing that the medial prefrontal cortical projection to the amygdala suppresses fear and anxiety was just published in Nature! [pdf]