Leora Yetnikoff
College of Staten Island CUNY, NY·Neuroscience·Early-career
Long periods of loneliness change the brain. Across species, chronic social isolation reduces myelin, the fatty insulating sheath wrapped around nerve fibers, in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a region critical for social behavior.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Psychology
Biology
- Topics
myelin
oligodendrocytes
oligodendrocyte lineage cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Test whether mesocortical dopamine terminals form anatomical and functional interactions with oligodendrocyte lineage cells, the myelin-forming cells, in the mouse medial prefrontal cortex using neuroanatomical approaches.
- Determine whether midbrain dopamine neuron activity is necessary and/or sufficient to regulate prefrontal myelination, using Cre-dependent adeno-associated virus vectors and CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis.
- Test whether midbrain dopamine neurons mediate prefrontal myelin loss during chronic social isolation of adult mice, combining targeted genetic manipulations with behavioral experiments.
More about the research
This loss, called hypomyelination, is associated with social deficits. Brain plasticity is now understood to include changes not only in how nerve cells talk to each other but also in how they interact with the cells that make myelin. Which brain chemicals drive isolation-induced myelin loss is unknown.
Why it matters
Altered myelin is linked to schizophrenia and addiction, disorders that also involve dopamine. Showing that dopamine shapes myelin plasticity in the prefrontal cortex could guide development of drug treatments that target myelin for these conditions, and would clarify how prolonged social isolation harms brain circuits supporting social behavior.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yungki Park
University at Buffalo, NY·Neuroscience
Determine whether Mef2d, a transcription factor that boosts the master regulator Olig2, controls Olig2 expression in oligodendrocyte-lineage cells in vivo.
Hyung Nam
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport, LA·Neuroscience
Determine how chronic alcohol lowers neurogranin, a synaptic protein that tunes glutamate signaling, in the mouse medial prefrontal cortex, and test tolerance in mice with mPFC-specific Ng knockout or overexpression.
Elizabeth Mietlicki-Baase
University at Buffalo, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether activating amylin receptors in the ventral tegmental area suppresses rapid dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens core in response to fat in the mouth, measured with fast-scan cyclic voltammetry.
The school
College of Staten Island CUNY: 2 labs on PI Pages, $6M a year on research, 3 research doctorates a year.
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