My research concerns the experimental investigation of cognitive processes in animal behavior, with particular interests in comparing cognition and perception in human and nonhuman animals. Specific research topics include: conceptual behavior, visual pattern recognition, short-term memory, and...

My research is aimed at understanding brain-behavior relationships in humans, at systems level. Two main approaches are used: the lesion method, in which brain-damaged patients are studied with neuropsychological procedures to determine how certain lesion sites are related to certain cognitive and...

Serotonin neurons are mainly localized to the raphe nuclei of the brainstem, but their axons are widely distributed throughout the nervous system and have a ubiquitous role in physiological processes and behavior. Adding to this complexity is the diverse array of high-affinity receptors that bind...

In patient with lewy body disease, the protein alpha-synuclein aggregates, leading to severe multi-system symptoms, including hallucinations, loss of smell, dementia, imbalance, fluctuating confusion, and anxiety/depression. The main research goal of the Aldridge Laboratory is to understand the...

Humans spend about a third of their life sleeping. Yet, our understanding of the cognitive, emotional and neurodevelopmental functions of this essential behavior and how these may be disrupted in clinical populations is still very limited. Sleep disturbances are observed in most major psychiatric...

My research focuses on elucidating central brain mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease, psychosocial disorders, heart failure and sudden cardiac death. The lab uses multidisciplinary approaches including radiotelemetry, optogenetics, neurophysiology, pharmacology, behavioral and molecular...

We combine behavioral, physiological, functional neuroanatomical, and cellular approaches to unravel the neural circuitry that underlies adaptive neuroendocrine responses to stress. Recently we have identified a locus in the basal forebrain that serves as a neural hub for integrating and relaying...

Alcoholism, alcohol abuse, and the medical complications of excessive drinking are major world-wide health problems. There are three long-term goals of my laboratory: (1) Alcohol exposure during development results in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) and induces profound damages to the...

The Jiang lab seeks to understand the cognitive and neural mechanisms that enable goal-directed behavior using a combination of lab- and web-based behavioral studies, functional neuroimaging, computational modeling and virtual reality technology. Specifically, the lab focuses on the fundamental...

In the lab, we use genetic techniques to isolate and manipulate neurons that mediate basic physiologic functions including sleep, appetite, bladder control, and thermoregulation. My focus lies in identifying and deciphering previously unknown connections between neurons in the brainstem and other...

My lab uses genetic manipulation in mice to study the effects of Acid Sensing Ion Channels (ASICs) on behavior. Because one of these channels, ASIC1, is abundant in the amygdala complex, we tested whether it plays a role in Pavlovian fear conditioning. We found that ASIC1a knockout mice have reduced...

We study the neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory. The main focus of our research is on neural circuit interactions necessary for learning and memory retrieval. We use multi-site tetrode recordings, neuroanatomy, neuropharmacology, DREADDs, optogenetics, electrical stimulation, machine...