Juan Deng-INSTITUTE FOR TRANSLATIONAL BRAIN RESEARCH

Juan Deng

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Juan Deng Junior Principal Investigator

Neural Mechanisms of Chronic Pain

Dr. Juan Deng obtained her Ph.D. degree in neuroscience at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2018, under the guidance of Professor Yangang Sun. She went on to complete her postdoctoral training in the same laboratory, with support from the Postdoctoral Innovative Talent Support Program. Dr. Deng joined the Institute for Translational Brain Research (ITBR) at Fudan University as a Junior Principal Investigator in January of 2021. Her lab, whose focuses is on identifying the neural circuit and cellular mechanisms underlying/implicated in the development of chronic pain, is supported by several fundings:

National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars (2023)

National Natural Science Foundation of China (General Program) (2022)

Science and Technology Innovation 2030 -- a major project of "Brain Science and brain-like Research" (2022)

Lingang Laboratory “Outstanding Youth Program” (2022)

Shanghai Rising-Star Program (2021)

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Pain sensation is critical for animals to sense the changing environment for potential danger, and thus is important for the survival of animals. Chronic pain, however, has been reported to affect the lives of more than 15% of adults.What's more devastating is a lack of viable treatment. Our recent discovery of the functional role of the ipsilateral spino-parabrachial pathway in pain sensation provides a critical foundation for the study of the central mechanism of pain processing. The research interest of our lab is to understand the cellular and circuit mechanisms contributing to the sensory and affective components of chronic pain using a combination of viral tracing, optogenetic, pharmacogenetic and behavioral techniques. With a long term goal of identifying new targets for the treatment of chronic pain. Current projects include:

1. The function and plasticity of supraspinal circuits – involved in the development of chronic pain

2. The neural circuits/pathways that regulate pain-related negative emotions

3. How pain percept can be modulated based on respective physiological states