뇌신경과학연구실 (Neuroscience Lab)

Our laboratory focuses on the physiology of the thalamic circuit, more specifically the interaction among neurons and glia, in sensory perception of a normal and diseased brain, so that we may better understand the function of glia and neurons to integrate the information in the brain and expand our knowledge of how sensory perception occurs in the normal and diseased states. Our main goal is to identify mechanisms of glial modulation of tonic GABA in the thalamus and its function involved in physiology and behaviors. Thalamus, located in the center of the brain, is the hub for receiving and sending sensory information and the center for the brain rhythm generation. It consists of multiple subnuclei, which have divergent connection with other brain regions, and however, large part of its connectivity are still unknown. We are currently working on tracing the connectivity of the thalamic reticular nucleus, which is mostly composed of GABAergic neurons, with other brain regions by using rabies virus injection into Cre-recombinase mouse model for retrograde tracing in order to investigate the neuronal circuitry of thalamic modulation in the brain function. Glia cells and neurons interact to support normal communications including sensory information processing and perception in the thalamus. We recently reported that astrocytes synthesize and release tonic GABA, whose increase enhanced the temporal fidelity of neuronal responses to distinguish inputs in the thalamus thus improving tactile discriminability in mice. Thus, we hypothesized that the glial network consisting of multiple cell types plays a pivotal role in mediating tonic GABA and tuning thalamic sensory processing, specifically by dynamically regulating the synaptic integration and membrane properties of thalamoc