James M Otis
Medical University of South Carolina, SC·Neuroscience
People with opioid or alcohol use disorder often feel a strong push to seek drugs and also struggle to stop, even when using causes harm. Both problems trace back to brain circuits that normally help us pursue rewards or hold back when pursuing them is a bad idea.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Psychology
- Topics
opioid use disorder
alcohol use disorder
addiction
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Feb 2030
What they work on
- Track single posterior paraventricular thalamus neurons that project to the nucleus accumbens across heroin self-administration, extinction, and reinstatement in mice, using two-photon calcium imaging.
- Measure long-lasting changes in the intrinsic excitability and synapses of pPVT-to-nucleus accumbens neurons at several time points after heroin self-administration.
- Test with optogenetics, light control of targeted neurons, whether pPVT-to-accumbens activity suppresses heroin seeking during extinction and whether its inhibition drives seeking during reinstatement.
- Define the gene-expression identities and brain locations of neuronal ensembles in the dmPFC and PVT pathways to the nucleus accumbens, using single-nucleus RNA sequencing and Xenium spatial sequencing.
- Determine how specific ensembles drive or release alcohol and opioid seeking, using two-photon imaging and single-cell holographic optogenetics, which controls individually selected neurons with patterned light.
More about the research
Little is known about how drug use rewires these circuits at the level of single neurons. The lab built a mouse behavioral assay that tracks the same identified neurons from first drug use through extinction (when drug seeking stops paying off) to relapse. Its projects use this assay to study two pathways into the nucleus accumbens, a hub of reward motivation.
Why it matters
Opioid and alcohol use disorders drive relapse partly through brain circuits that boost drug seeking or fail to restrain it. By identifying the genes and functions of the specific neurons involved, this work could reveal cell populations and molecular targets for future treatments for people with opioid or alcohol addiction. Public datasets could also support other addiction researchers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Giuseppe Giannotti
Washington State University, WA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Track the real-time activity of PVT neurons tagged with TRAP during spontaneous versus naloxone-precipitated withdrawal, using in vivo calcium imaging while rodents respond to heroin-linked cues.
Marianne Seney
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Neuroscience
Determine whether somatostatin-expressing neurons in human prefrontal cortex show pronounced transcriptional changes in people with opioid use disorder who also used nicotine, using postmortem brain tissue.
Wendy Lynch
University of Virginia, VA·Neuroscience
Determine how doses of inhibitory and excitatory low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) applied to the rat dorsomedial prefrontal cortex change markers of neuronal activity and dopamine and glutamate signaling during early and late opioid withdrawal.
The school
Medical University of South Carolina: 19 labs on PI Pages, $321M a year on research, 271 research doctorates a year.
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