Aaron Norris
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Neuroscience
Small groups of neurons deep in the brain shape how animals cope with danger and how they balance energy. When these circuits misfire, they can contribute to anxiety disorders and obesity.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
Pharmacology
- Topics
neural circuits
supramammillary nucleus
nucleus accumbens
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Feb 2031
What they work on
- Measure and manipulate supramammillary nucleus neurons with fiber photometry and optogenetics to define their timing and causal role during threat learning, avoidance and extinction in mice.
- Test whether supramammillary neurons selectively excite specific neuron populations in the nucleus accumbens, a motivation hub, to promote threat avoidance.
- Identify the supramammillary cell types recruited during threat learning and sustained avoidance, using Projection-TAGs, barcoded retrograde viruses, and Act-seq with single-nucleus RNA sequencing.
- Determine whether KOR-expressing preoptic hypothalamus neurons are recruited by time of day and inhibited by feeding, recording their activity with fiber photometry.
- Test whether activating KOR-expressing preoptic neurons raises energy expenditure, reduces fat, improves metabolic markers and converts white fat to beige fat, using indirect calorimetry, thermal imaging and metabolomics.
More about the research
Two projects in mice identify specific neuron populations and test what they do, by recording their activity, switching them on or off, and measuring the resulting behavior or metabolism.
Why it matters
Anxiety- and stress-related disorders often involve avoidance that persists even when it no longer helps. Identifying the brain circuits that maintain this avoidance could reveal new drug targets. KOR is also enriched in the human preoptic hypothalamus. Showing that these neurons control how much energy the body burns could point to ways of promoting weight loss and treating obesity-related metabolic disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christian Bravo-Rivera
University of Puerto Rico-Medical Sciences, PR·Neuroscience
Characterize how nucleus accumbens neurons and astrocytes encode the learning and expression of approach/avoidance conflict, using calcium fiber photometry in mice performing the platform-mediated avoidance task.
Xiaoting Wu
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY·Neuroscience
Identify neuromodulatory inputs to ventral CA1 (vCA1), a hippocampal region, that drive positive social memories, using optogenetics in Cre-driver mice, fiber photometry during social interactions, and conditional deletion of neuromodulators.
Stephan Lammel
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Neuroscience
Test whether neurotensin signaling in the pathway from the lateral nucleus accumbens to the VTA drives hedonic feeding in mice, using optogenetics, NTS receptor blockers and a new neurotensin sensor that measures release in vitro and in vivo.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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