Host: Prof. Aihua Chen, East China Normal University
Abstract:
Clinical observation has identified cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome, which is characterized by various non-motor dysfunctions such as anxiety. We demonstrate that neurons in the cerebellar nuclei (CN) of male mice project to a subset of zona incerta (ZI) neurons through long-range glutamatergic and GABAergic transmissions, both capable of encoding acute stress. Activating or inhibiting glutamatergic and GABAergic transmissions in the CN→ZI pathway can positively or negatively regulate anxiety and place preference through presynaptic plasticity-dependent mechanism, as well as mediate motor-induced alleviation of anxiety. Our data support a close relationship between the cerebellum and emotional processes and suggest that targeting cerebellar outputs may be an effective approach for treating anxiety.
Biography:
Ying Shen, a professor at Guangzhou Medical University, is a Nanshan Scholar and a Distinguished Young Scholars of National Natural Science Foundation of China. His main research focuses on the cellular and circuit mechanisms of the cerebellum in motor and mental disorders. He has published in research journals as the corresponding author in Nat Neurosci, Protein Cell, Neuron, Nat Commun, ELife, Cell Rep, Adv Sci, PNAS, and J Neurosci.
This event is open to the NYU Shanghai, East China Normal University, and Neuroscience community.