Xiaoting Wu
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Remembering who someone is, and whether meeting them was pleasant or upsetting, is central to social life. These abilities are impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia, and there are few effective treatments, partly because the brain circuits behind them are poorly understood.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
- Topics
social memory
social recognition memory
social hierarchy
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jan 2031
What they work on
- Identify neuromodulatory inputs to ventral CA1 (vCA1), a hippocampal region, that drive positive social memories, using optogenetics in Cre-driver mice, fiber photometry during social interactions, and conditional deletion of neuromodulators.
- Identify and manipulate neuromodulatory inputs to vCA1 that control negative social memories, recording their activity during unpleasant social encounters and testing memory after deleting the neuromodulators in input projections.
- Find the vCA1 cell types that hold positive versus negative social memories and how they interact when a memory's emotional value changes, using TRAP2;Ai14 activity tagging, RNAscope RNA detection and brain-slice electrophysiology.
- Test whether oxytocin excites inhibitory GABA-releasing interneurons in the supramammillary nucleus (SuM) and so quiets SuM neurons that project to hippocampal CA2, using an OTR-Cre rat line, slice recordings and peptide optogenetics.
- Determine whether activating oxytocin receptor neurons in the SuM helps rats form social recognition memories, and how oxytocin affects SuM-to-CA2 and SuM-to-dentate gyrus neurons in vivo, using chemogenetics and fiber photometry.
- Test whether dorsal CA2 neurons encode familiarity and social rank like place cells on an abstract social map, using fiber photometry, Miniscope single-cell imaging and linear-classifier decoding models.
- Determine how neuromodulators released from the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus shape dorsal CA2 social maps, using new neuromodulator sensors during Miniscope imaging and blocking their release during social behaviors.
More about the research
The hippocampus, a brain region essential for memory, has subregions that handle social information. The research here asks how the hippocampus and its inputs build social memories and maps of social relationships. It focuses on neuromodulators, chemical messengers such as oxytocin that tune how neurons respond. The three projects study rodents and combine tools that switch specific neurons on or off with methods that record brain activity during behavior.
Why it matters
People with autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia often struggle to recognize others and to interpret and remember emotional social encounters, and current treatments help little. By identifying which neuromodulators, such as oxytocin, and which hippocampal circuits support these abilities, this work could point to new drug targets. It could also guide studies in animal models of brain disorders that ask whether disruptions in these pathways contribute to social deficits.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Hesong Liu
Upstate Medical University, NY·Neuroscience·Early-career
Record the real-time activity of vCA1-projecting dorsal raphe serotonin neurons, and serotonin release in ventral CA1, during memory learning and recall in mice, using fiber photometry.
Aubrey Kelly
Emory University, GA·Neuroscience
Test whether the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) suppresses fear circuitry to enable spiny mice to approach unfamiliar individuals and form new groups, using DREADDs to control specific neurons.
Glenn M Toney
Texas A&M University-College Station, TX·Neuroscience
Test whether raising the brain's own opioids in the PVH of normal mice reproduces the heightened opioid-induced respiratory depression seen in mice exposed to chronic intermittent hypercapnic hypoxia, a model of sleep apnea.
The school
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: 45 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 62 research doctorates a year.
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