Weisheng Wang-INSTITUTE FOR TRANSLATIONAL BRAIN RESEARCH

Weisheng Wang

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Weisheng Wang Principal Investigator

The Neurobiology of Negative Emotional Behavior

Dr.Weisheng Wangis currently a Principal Investigator and professor at the Institute for Translational Brain Research at Fudan University. He received his Ph.D. degree in neuropharmacology at Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011. He worked in Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica as Assistant Adjunct Professor from 2011 to 2013. Then he went to the University of California for postdoctoral training in 2013. In August 2021, he joined Fudan University and establish a laboratory and focus on the neurobiology of negative emotional behavior.

His laboratory aims to identify the neuron circuits encoding the negative emotional behavior by producing mechanistic models of how neurons integrate sensory information, experience and innate drives to generate behavior, and to address the neurobiological basis by using optogenetic, chemogenetic, electrophysiological, calcium imaging and other related technologies.

His previous work has been published as first author in Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, Molecular Psychiatry, eLife, Journal of Neuroscience, Neuropsychopharmacology, Cerebral Cortex and other academic journals.

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Defensive behaviors are a group of responses that are instinctive and has evolved to avoid harm from predators and other threats in the environment. Like freezing or flight, defensive behaviors are innate and are expressed with a stereotypical set of movements, but they are far from fixed, instead, they are flexible and adaptive.

Currently we are actively studying the functional roles of hypothalamic signals in defensive behavior, as well as how brain circuit is dynamically responded. We believe that the defensive behavior circuits are plastic and that changes are likely to occur in various nodes along the circuit. We utilize optogenetic and chemogenetic methods in free moving mice and seek to reveal and manipulate the neural dynamics that support the complex defensive behavior in response to threat.

We hope that our research uncovers the neural mechanism mediating the plasticity of negative emotional behaviors and improves our understanding of brain function and cognition in general.