Research that was initially focused on fear, anxiety, and defensive behaviors has resulted in a series of unexpected discoveries that have shed new light on eating behaviors, and, possibly, on eating disorders involving both compulsive eating when already “full” as well as aversion to food even when hungry.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles
2018 Young Investigator Grant
Fernando Midea Cuccovia V Reis, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology at UCLA. Dr. Reis received his Ph.D. in Psychobiology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, investigating the neural bases underlying healthy and pathological states of fear and anxiety. His research focuses on characterizing neural mechanisms that control survival behaviors and underlie different emotional states. Combining the use of neural recording techniques and optogenetics in rodents, his current research aims to characterize how basic neural mechanisms related to positive and negative motivations interact during compulsive food-seeking behaviors. By decoding brain states using calcium imaging in the midbrain, he will identify patterns of activity specifically related to processing of negative and positive events associated to compulsive overeating. Using optogenetic techniques to manipulate cell activity, he will test causal relations between the midbrain neural activity and the occurrences of avoidant, appetitive and consummatory behaviors.
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Member, Brain Research Institute, Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology GPB Home Area, Neuroscience GPB Home Area
University of California, Los Angeles
2014 Young Investigator Grant
Dr. Adhikari joined UCLA’s Psychology Department in 2016, following postdoctoral training at Stanford University with Prof. Karl Deisseroth and Ph.D. studies at Columbia University with Prof. Joshua A. Gordon and Prof. Rene Hen.
Dr. Adhikari’s lab investigates how the brain coordinates the constellation of changes related to emotional behaviors, with a focus on fear and anxiety. These multi-faceted changes involve complex and dynamic adaptations in hormonal, physiological and behavioral realms. Dr. Adhikari dissects how interactions between different brain structures control these processes, seeking insights that shed light on the neural basis of pathological anxiety disorders and adaptive aversion to danger. To do so we use a combination of powerful techniques, including electrophysiology, behavioral assays, optogenetics and calcium imaging to monitor and control neural activity and behavior.
Learn more about our research at his lab website.
Most genome studies conducted to date that have aimed to identify DNA variations associated with various psychiatric illnesses have depended upon samples drawn from populations composed mostly of people of European ancestry.
Bipolar disorder (BD) is a complex disease that varies notably in different patients, clinically, cognitively, and in terms of brain function. The reliance on traditional disease classifications (e.g., DSM categorical diagnoses) has yielded an incomplete understanding of the illness. To overcome this, we have applied empirical approaches to classify individuals along neurobiologically relevant dimensions into more homogenous subgroups.
Psychosis, which involves hallucinations, delusions, and other distortions of thought and perception, is often associated with schizophrenia. But it also occurs in other disorders, including major depression. Psychosis is less well understood in this context, which is to be expected since most depression studies exclude patients who experience psychosis symptoms.
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
University of Toronto
Clinician Scientist
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
2020 Young Investigator Grant
An international team has reported the development of a new online-based resource that could significantly advance brain research and ultimately aid in the clinical diagnosis and early detection of a wide range of psychiatric illnesses.
Researchers studying the stories that people with PTSD tell about their traumatic experiences and then analyzing them in terms of the way they are represented in the brain by measuring patterns of firing neurons have found evidence that trauma memories are “an alternative cognitive entity” quite distinct from other representations of memory, including sad memories.
Extensive research over several decades, some of it led by investigators supported by BBRF, has demonstrated that stress, including psychosocial stress (stress that arises from social interactions) is one of the most important risk factors for depression.
Great effort has therefore been devoted to research seeking to reveal precisely how stress perturbs the biology of the brain and other bodily systems to produce the diverse range of depression symptoms.
