The Swartz Program at Harvard University seeks applicants for a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical and computational neuroscience. Based on a grant from the Swartz Foundation, a Swartz postdoctoral fellowship is available at Harvard University with a start date in the summer or fall of 2024. Postdocs join a vibrant group of theoretical and experimental neuroscientists plus theorists in allied fields at Harvard’s Center for Brain Science. The Center for Brain Science includes faculty doing research on a wide variety of topics, including neural mechanisms of rodent learning, decision-making, and sex-specific and social behaviors; reinforcement learning in rodents and humans; human motor control; behavioral and fMRI studies of human cognition; circuit mechanisms of learning and behavior in worms, larval flies, and larval zebrafish; circuit mechanisms of individual differences in flies and humans; rodent and fly olfaction; inhibitory circuit development; retinal circuits; and large-scale reconstruction of detailed brain circuitry.

Sympathetic nerve activation of adrenergic receptors on fat is the major pathway the brain uses to drive non-shivering thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue and lipolysis in white fat. There is accumulating evidence that the peripheral nerve architecture inside of organs is plastic (can be remodeled) but the factors and conditions that regulate or result in remodeling are largely unknown. Particularly for fat, it remains unclear if nerves in fat can be remodeled in step with hyperplasia/trophy of adipose tissue as result of a prolonged energy surfeit. This talk will discuss our recent work identifying the sympathetic nerve architecture in adipose tissue as highly plastic in response to the adipose hormone leptin, the brain circuitry leptin acts on to regulate this and the physiological effects remodeling of innervation has on fat tissue function.

My lab is focused on how brain encodes and modulates social interactions. Intraspecific social interactions are integral for survival and maintenance of society among all mammalian species. Despite the importance of social interactions, we lack a complete understanding of the brain circuitry involved in processing social behaviour. My lab investigates how the hypothalamic orexin (hypocretin) neurons and their downstream circuits participate in social interaction behaviours. These neurons are located exclusively in the hypothalamus that regulates complex and goal-directed behaviours. We recently identified that orexin neurons differentially encode interaction between familiar and novel animals. We are currently investigating how chronic social isolation, a risk factor for the development of social-anxiety like behaviours, affects orexin neuron activity and how we can manipulate the activity of these neurons to mitigate isolation-induced social deficits.