Biomedical Engineering
Understanding neural circuit function in awake rodents by integrating multidimensional information
March 20, 2018
4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. ET
Doherty Hall A302
Nanyin Zhang, PhD
Hartz Family Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences
The Pennsylvania State University
Abstract
A major challenge in research on the pathophysiology of brain disorders has been the difficulty to directly translate from human symptoms to animal models that have a unique behavioral repertoire. The brain circuit function and connectivity, which has become accessible through the broad application of fMRI in humans, might provide a link between animal models and observations in humans with psychiatric
disease. However, this task has been largely unsuccessful, primarily due to the confounding effects of anesthesia in most animal fMRI experiments. Our lab has established an approach that allows animal’s brain circuit function to be examined at the awake state and investigation of the link between animal models and human pathophysiology for psychiatric disorders.