Guoshi Li
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Neuroscience
The brain works by balancing excitation, signals that make neurons fire, against inhibition, signals that quiet them. Animal studies and human brain scans suggest this excitation-inhibition (E-I) balance is disrupted in Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biomedical Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
excitation-inhibition balance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Predict which brain regions have disrupted excitation-inhibition balance in 3xTg-AD Alzheimer's model mice versus normal mice, by applying the Multiscale Neural Model Inversion (MNMI) framework to ZTE resting-state fMRI and diffusion MRI.
- Validate MNMI predictions at the individual and group level by recording E-I activity with fiber photometry, an implanted optical recording method, during simultaneous fMRI at four selected brain sites, refining the model where predictions deviate.
- Test whether E-I imbalance in 3xTg-AD mice is associated with cognitive impairment, using behavioral testing alongside the imaging and optical measurements.
More about the research
The imbalance could be both a cause of symptoms and a treatment target. But standard functional MRI (fMRI) brain scans cannot show E-I balance at the level of cells and circuits. The team has developed a computational approach called Multiscale Neural Model Inversion (MNMI). It works backward from noninvasive scans to estimate E-I balance in specific brain circuits.
Why it matters
A validated model that reads circuit-level E-I imbalance from routine, noninvasive MRI could support earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. It could also guide personalized treatments aimed at restoring brain balance during early intervention. The same framework could later be applied to study other neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jens H Jensen
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Neuroscience
Determine whether diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI), an MRI method that measures water movement in tissue, can track brain microstructure changes in 3xTg-AD mice treated with the drug P021 from 2 to 18 months of age.
Ruth Carper
San Diego State University, CA·Neuroscience
Track changes in brain anatomy, function and connectivity in autistic and typical adults aged 40–70 using multimodal MRI, and relate them to motor, executive and emotional changes.
Ai-Ling Lin
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Neuroscience
Identify how the severity of gut dysbiosis tracks over time with regional amyloid, tau and neurodegeneration markers and cognition in Alzheimer's patients and healthy controls, using PET, 7 Tesla MRI, gut microbiome sequencing and cognitive testing.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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