Jin Hui Wang

Title : Associative memory cells in physiology and pathology

Abstract:

Associative memory occurs daily basis in lifespan, in which the basic units in memory traces have been found as associative memory cells that are critical for cognitive activities and emotion responses. In addition to encoding the physiological signals, these associative memory cells are presumably involved in the fear memories in relevance to psychiatric disorders. We have examined the recruitment of associative memory neurons that encode the stressful signals of inducing fear memory and psychiatry-like behaviors by multidisciplinary approaches. The social stress by a resident/intruder paradigm leads to fear memory as well as anxiety-, depression- and schizophrenia-like behaviors in intruder mice. In addition to the interconnections of auditory and somatosensory S1-Tr cortical neurons, the S1-Tr and auditory cortical neurons become to encode the stressful signals including the battle sound and the somatic pain, i.e., the associative memory neurons. Neuroligin-3 mRNA knockdown in the S1-Tr cortex or the auditory cortex precludes the recruitment of associative memory neurons as well as the emergence of the fear memory and psychiatry-like behaviors. Thus, the stress-induced recruitment of associative memory neurons in sensory cortices for stress-relevant fear memory and anxiety is based on neuroligin-3-mediated new synapse formation.

Biography:

Dr. Jin-Hui Wang earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience (1989–1992) under Dr. De-Pei Feng at the Shanghai Institute of Physiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. He pursued postdoctoral research at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry (1992–1993) and later at the State University of New York Health Science Center at Brooklyn (1993–1994), supported by NIH and Chinese Academy of Sciences funding. Dr. Wang held positions as a research scientist at the University of Texas Houston (1994–1999) and assistant professor at the University of Kansas (1999–2004). He served as a professor at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2003–2017), before becoming a distinguished professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017. Author of Associative Memory Cells: Basic Units of Memory Traces, Dr. Wang's research advances the understanding of memory and neurobiology.