Grant: Project Grant

Memory is critical for individual and societal well-being, and memory-associated disorders (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder) impose pronounced health and financial burdens. Revealing the neurobiology underlying memory - for example, key molecules and cells - will address a central question of fundamental neuroscience and may ultimately facilitate treatment of associated disorders. Our laboratory will seek to understand fear memory by combining cutting-edge neuroscience technologies with "Big Data" analysis. To begin, in mice that have obtained fear memory in a laboratory setting, we will measure the expression of every gene in the mouse genome for thousands of individual brain neurons. From these Big Data, we will extract previously unresolved genes and neuron types that participate in fear memory. Using genetic and pharmacologic approaches, we will manipulate these genes and neuron types with the aim of disrupting fear memory in a safe, acute, and precise way. In total, this research seeks to identify and regulate the molecular and cellular components of fear memory in the mammalian brain. This will provide a comprehensive understanding of the basic biology of memory, generate a framework with which other types of memory may be compared and interpreted, and help to innovate novel targets and approaches to disrupting fear memory. In the long term, these results may inform and guide the generation of new therapeutic approaches for preventing traumatic fear memory in humans.