Time: 10:30-12:00 on Thur.,May.18, 2023

Venue：E109, Biomedicine Hall

Speaker: Dr.Nashat Abumaria

Host: Dr.Sen Song

Title:  A neural circuit that regulates give up-like behavior

Abstract：

Persistence in the face of failure helps to overcome challenges. But the ability to adjust behavior or even give up when the task is uncontrollable has advantages. How the mammalian brain switches behavior in response to uncontrollability is unknown. We generated two mouse models of behavioral transition from action to no-action during exposure to prolonged experience with an uncontrollable outcome. The transition was not caused by pain desensitization or muscle fatigue and was not a depression-/learned helplessness-like behavior. Noradrenergic neurons projecting to GABAergic neurons within orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) are key regulators of this behavior. Fiber photometry, microdialysis, mini-two-photon microscopy and tetrodes/optrodes in vivo recording in freely behaving mice revealed that reduction of norepinephrine and downregulation of alpha 1 receptor in OFC reduced the number and activity of GABAergic neurons necessary for driving action behavior resulting in behavioral transition. These findings define a circuit governing behavioral switch in response to prolonged uncontrollability.

Biography：

Prof. Nashat Abumaria received his Ph.D. degree in neurosciences from the International Max-Planck Research School, Göttingen University, Germany. Upon completion of his first postdoctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Clinical Neurobiology, German Primate Center in 2007 in Göttingen, he moved to China and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Center for Learning and Memory in Tsinghua University. In 2011, he was appointed as a research associated professor in the Department of Basic Medical Research, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University. In 2015, he established a research group at Institutes of Brain Science, Fudan University. Currently, Dr. Abumaria is a principal investigator and faculty at State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology and MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Institutes of Brain Science, Fudan University. Dr. Abumaria has authored 30 papers in international journals and received several awards, fellowships, and grants including: Goettingen University Msc fellowship, Christoph-Lichtenberg stipend from the government of lower Saxony, China postdoc foundation grant and several NSFC grants. 

Research Monograph: A major aim of his lab is to uncover cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying cognition and emotions. Dr. Abumaria’s lab works with unconventional molecular targets and develops innovative behavioral assays to tackle scientific questions within the frame of the major research aim. The lab conducts research at different levels from molecule to behavior and vice a versa.