Neurophysiology

Dr. Arnsten is an international expert on the molecular regulation of higher cortical circuits, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She received her B.A. in Neuroscience from Brown University in 1976 (where she created the Neuroscience major), and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCSD in 1981. She did post-doctoral research with Dr. Susan Iversen at Cambridge University in the UK, and with Dr. Patricia Goldman-Rakic at Yale. Dr. Arnsten's research examines the neural basis of higher cognition. Her work has revealed that the newly evolved cortical circuits that underlie higher cognition are uniquely regulated at the molecular level, conferring vulnerability in mental illness and age-related cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's Disease. Arnsten's research has led to new treatments for cognitive disorders in humans, including the successful translation of guanfacine (IntunivTM) for the treatment of ADHD and related prefrontal cortical disorders.

Dr. Blumenfeld's clinical and research work focuses on epilepsy, cognition and brain imaging. He directs Yale's Clinical Neuroscience Imaging Center (CNIC), a new multi-disciplinary core facility for innovative study and treatment of brain disorders. Teaching activities include a textbook titled Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases, Sinauer Assoc., Publ. 2002, 2010, 2020.

Dr. Angélique Bordey holds the rank of Professor of Neurosurgery, and Cellular & Molecular Physiology. Dr. Bordey is also a Senior Vice-President of Neurosciences at Cassava Sciences, Inc. Dr. Bordey is an active participant in teaching and training of graduate and medical students at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Bordey is an Editor for several journals and has served on the advisory board of CURE epilepsy, the TSC Alliance preclinical consortium, and on grant review committees, including NIH study sections. Finally, she is a McKnight awardee and holds several federal and foundation grants as well as patents for the treatment of epilepsy.

John received an A.B. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Stanford, both in biochemistry. As a postdoc at Stanford he explored “Antigenetics”. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Genetics Society of America Medal and the Kornberg-Berg Lifetime Achievement Award in Biomedical Sciences from Stanford University. He was awarded the Yale College Dylan Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence as well as the Yale College Byrnes/Sewall Teaching Prize. Seventeen of his PhD students have won awards for their dissertations, and he received the Yale Postdoctoral Mentoring Prize. Upon arrival at Yale as an Assistant Professor, John began working on chemoreception in Drosophila. At the time virtually nothing was known about the molecular or cellular basis of olfaction or taste in this organism. Since then his laboratory has made a number of advances in the field, including the discovery of the first insect odor receptors, the discovery of the first insect taste receptors, and the elucidation of basic principles of the logic of odor and taste coding. John’s lab currently studies receptors, neurons, and circuits that underlie olfaction, taste, and pheromone recognition in Drosophila and in insects that transmit global disease.

Sreeganga S. Chandra received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Purdue University. In her postdoctoral research, she pursued her interest in neuronal cell biology and neurodegeneration in the lab of Thomas C. Südhof at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience.

Rui Chang received his B.S. in Biological Sciences and Biotechnology from Tsinghua University, China in 2005. He then studied sensory transduction with Emily Liman and earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Southern California in 2011. He completed his postdoctoral training with Stephen Liberles at Harvard Medical School, where he investigated how body sensory cues are monitored by the brain through the vagus nerve, and how these internal signals regulate whole body physiology. He joined both the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine in January 2018.The Chang lab uses state-of-the-art molecular, genetic, and imaging approaches including single-cell gene expression profiling, virus-based anatomical mapping, in vivo imaging, optogenetics, and chemogenetics to reveal the physiological functions of diverse organ-to-brain circuits. The goal is to better understand the important body-brain interface, and to develop novel neuronal-based therapeutic strategies for disease intervention.

Steve Chang is an Associate Professor of Psychology and of Neuroscience at Yale University. He is a member of the Wu Tsai Institute and the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale. He is the co-Director of Graduate Studies for Yale's Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program (INP), and the co-Director of Undergraduate Studies for Yale's Neuroscience (NSCI) major. His research aims to understand the neural circuit mechanisms of social cognition and social decision-making. Major research approaches include using naturalistic social interaction paradigms combined with state-of-the-art behavioral and neural technologies. The ultimate goal of the research program is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition and to learn how these processes may be disrupted in psychiatric conditions with social deficits.

Dr. Che joined the faculty of Yale Department of Psychiatry in 2021, after completing her postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Natalia De Marco García at Weill Cornell Medical College and Dr. Gord Fishell at NYU. She earned a Ph.D. in Physiology and Neurobiology in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph LoTurco at the University of Connecticut in 2014. She received a B.S. triple-majoring in Biology, Physics and Physical Chemistry at Pacific Lutheran University in Washington state in 2009.

Jonathan Demb is a Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Science with secondary appointments in the Department of Cellular & Molecular Physiology and the Department of Neuroscience. Dr. Demb obtained his doctoral degree from Stanford University and did postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. Demb was a faculty member at the University of Michigan before moving to Yale in 2011. The Demb lab investigates the cellular and synaptic mechanisms that enable visual processing by the mammalian retina. Major accomplishments include identifying fundamental nonlinearities at retinal synapses that mediate specialized spatial processing by retinal ganglion cells; elucidating the role of disinhibition in visual contrast processing; characterizing asymmetries between the retina's ON and OFF pathways; determining roles of NMDA-type glutamate receptors in ganglion cell receptive fields; identifying characteristic properties of cone-mediated vision in the mouse retina; developing the use of a glutamate sensor (iGluSnFR) for study of retinal circuitry; identifying novel amacrine cell circuits using optogenetic technology; and testing experimental therapies in mouse models of retinal disease. Demb is a Reviewing Editor at the Journal of Neuroscience and is on the Editorial Board of PLoS Biology. He was awarded the Cogan Award in 2013 from the Associate for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) to recognize his contributions to the field of retinal neuroscience.

Dr. George Dragoi is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry and a member of the Wu-Tsai Institute at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven. He received his M.D. degree from the Grigore Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Iasi, Romania and his Ph.D. degree in Behavioral and Neural Science from Rutgers University. He completed his postdoctoral studies and was a Research Scientist at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he revealed the existence of preconfigured cellular assemblies that pre-play in time the spatial sequences occurring during a future novel spatial experience in naive animals. Dr. Dragoi studies the dynamic interplay between externally-driven and preconfigured internally-generated representations of the external world to understand memory formation and spatial navigation. He aims to map the neural circuits and decipher the neuronal codes underlying the formation of these representations across brain development and in adulthood using large-scale high-density electrophysiology and computational methods for data analysis. Recently, he conceptualized the existence of a generative grammar in the brain that could support the brain’s ability to express internally generated representations about the world. Dr. Dragoi’ current research focuses on the role of neuronal activity and prior experience in cellular assembly organization and animal learning with implications for our better understanding of neuro-psychiatric diseases.

Irina Esterlis is a clinical neuropsychologist and neuroreceptor imager with extensive training in the application of SPECT and PET to the study of mood, trauma, suicide, and comorbid disorders. Dr. Esterlis has developed two novel paradigms to interrogate both the acetylcholine and glutamatergic systems in vivo in human. Her lab was also the first to show ketamine-induced changes in human volunteers in vivo. She has received awards from Society of Nuclear Medicine, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Society for Biological Psychiatry, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Esterlis' current work includes the study of the metabotropic glutamatergic receptor involvement in bipolar depression and suicide, and synaptic alterations associated with depression, aging, and suicidality. The lab has expanded to add in vivo preclinical work to elucidate human findings.

Tristan obtained a Master's of Science and Engineering in Materials from France before moving to Seoul, South Korea to complete a graduate degree in Neuroscience / Psychology at Korea University. During his PhD, Tristan learned extracellular electrophysiology and optogenetic techniques as well as animal behavior. He then moved to New York City as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Attila Losonczy at Columbia University in 2017. During his postdoc, Tristan used multiphoton imaging to uncover the organization and function of hippocampal microcircuits responsible for our ability to learn and remember. A large portion of his research was also devoted to developing experimental methods that offered new vistas into the anatomical and physiological integration of individual neurons into large networks. Tristan joined the faculty of the Department of Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine in 2024, and is a Wu Tsai Institute Investigator.

Dr. Grutzendler obtained his MD from Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, where he was born and raised. He completed a medical internship in Internal Medicine and a residency in Neurology at Washington University/Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Following that, he pursued a combined clinical and research fellowship in the Alzheimer Disease Research Center and the Department of Neurobiology at Washington University, with additional neurobiology research training at the Skirball Institute of New York University. Dr. Grutzendler's laboratory is dedicated to understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of normal brain function and neuropathology. They have a particular focus on elucidating mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration, such as those found in Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, they aim to advance the understanding of cell-cell interactions through the utilization of intravital optical imaging techniques, enabling them to study the brain in real-time and observe dynamic processes at the cellular and molecular levels. Moreover, their laboratory is interested in developing therapeutics for brain disorders. Leveraging their expertise in brain imaging, they work with chemists to develop novel small molecules to target specific brain cell types for drug delivery and as imaging probes. In addition to the research endeavors, Dr. Grutzendler is actively involved in clinical activities focused on dementia and Alzheimer's patients. He works closely with individuals affected by these neurodegenerative disorders, providing comprehensive care and support.

Dr. Xiaosi Gu is Professor of Psychiatry and Biomedical Informatics & Data Science, and Director of the Computational Psychiatry Unit at Yale School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, followed by postdoctoral training at Virginia Tech and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. A recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), Dr. Gu is internationally recognized for her research in the field of computational psychiatry, which seeks to understand how humans form beliefs and make decisions and how these processes break down in psychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression, autism, amongst others. Continuously funded by NIH and private foundations, her work integrates computational modeling, cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, and human intracranial recording methods. Dr. Gu has published widely in leading scientific journals such as Nature Mental Health, Nature Human Behavior, JAMA Psychiatry, PNAS, amongst many others. She is a Co-Director for the Society for Computational Psychiatry, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Computational Psychiatry, and a Reviewing Editor at eLife. Dr. Gu was the organizer for the London Computational Psychiatry Course, which was a precursor to the Computational Psychiatry Conference, where she is currently a Steering Committee Member. Dr. Gu has also served as a member of the NIMH Board of Scientific Counselors, a Scientific Advisor to the Wellcome Trust and Simon’s Foundation, Co-President of the Society for Computational Psychiatry, and a grant reviewer for numerous organizations such as the NIH, NSF, the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (UK), and DFG (Germany). Outside the lab, Dr. Gu is a dedicated advocate for mental health awareness, regularly speaking at public forums including a TEDx talk in 2018.