Team.
János Fuzik.
János Fuzik is an interdisciplinary neuroscientist and Assistant Professor of neuroscience at the Dept. of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. His research seeks to understand the neuronal circuit correlates of anxiety disorders from complete circuits down to the specific connections between specific neuronal types. The Fuzik Lab’s experimental approach combines all-optical voltage imaging, mouse behavior, and molecular biology to uncover the synaptic mechanisms that underly the maladaptive re-routing of threatful information resulting in anxiety.
Current members.
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Veronika Csillag
Postdoctoral Researcher
Veronika Csillag is a postdoctoral researcher in the Fuzik Lab. Veronika's main background is hormonal neuromodulation and electrophysiology in the brain. She is interested to understand the neuronal connectivity changes underlying the development of brain states in mouse models of anxiety. She is using all-optical voltage imaging in combination with anatomical and molecular approaches to address her questions about neuronal circuit maladaptation in anxiety.
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Gréta Martina Szücs
PhD Student
Gréta Martina Szücs is a PhD student in the Fuzik Lab. Gréta seeks to understand the disinhibitory circuits of deep brain structures that regulate defensive behaviors. She investigates the molecular identity and synaptic connectivity of inhibitory neurons using single-cell RNA-sequencing, anatomical tracing, all-optical voltage imaging and electrophysiology. Her goal is to understand how inhibition of inhibition - a fine regulation of neuronal circuits - gates and controls defensive behaviors and gets impaired in brain states of anxiety.
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Inés Talaya Vidal
Lab Assistant
Inés Talaya Vidal is a Lab Assistant in the Fuzik Lab. Inés aimes to understand how threatful information induces defensive behaviors. Inés uses a psychological stressor, predator scent, to induce long-lasting circuit maladaptation as a model of PTSD and uses machine learning-based and custom-written analysis to obtain a detailed understanding of the resulting behavioral changes. She is interested to untangle the neuronal mechanisms underlying susceptibility to stress.
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Leo Juhlin
Lab Assistant/PhD student
Leo Juhlin is a Lab assistant in the Fuzik Lab who is interested to fin out how large neuronal synapticly connected networks communicate to regulate innate defensive behaviors. He is using all-optical voltage imaging and advanced big data analysis to model the synaptic language of neuronal ensembles of genetically defined connectomes in the periaqueductal gray and in the hypothalamus. He is specifically looking at the role of inhibition and disinhibition in these brain regions that largely determine the chances of survival.
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Lucia Adam
Master Student
Lucia Adam is a Master Student in the Fuzik Lab. Lucia is investigating the whole-brain anatomical patterns of extreme neuronal activation by spatially mapping neuronal early-gene activation in the brain of mice exposed to predator cues. She is looking into correlations of innate defensive behavioral responses and the spatial neuronal activation patterns to better understand how specific brain regions contribute to different fight-flight or freeze defensive strategies.
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Elena Carré
Master Student
Elena Carré is an Erasmus intern in the Fuzik Lab, she is a master student from the University of Toulouse. She is investigating the identity of hypothalamic neurons using immunohistochemistry. She is interested to find the overlap of the neuronal identity and the neuronal activation pattern in the hypothalamus following exposure to predator cues. She is also comparing the anatomical position of these ensembles to the behavioral response during predator scent exposure and exploring their causal relationship.
Alumni.
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Alexandra Jänis
Alexandra Jänis was a master Student in the Fuzik Lab. She worked on understanding the circuit correlates of anxiety disorders. The lab is using mouse models of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to better understand the neuronal circuit mechanisms that result in maladapted brain networks causing long-lasting anxiety symptoms. Alex did a great job in mapping the early-gene activation patterns in the hypothalamus and periaqueductal gray of mice exposed to predator scent.
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Katerina Filippopoulu
Katerina Filippopoulu was an Erasmus student in the Fuzik Lab. She was interested to understand the animal models of PTSD and the anatomy of the mouse brain. She did an efficient training to distinguish the regions of the whole brain and used this newly gained knowledge to spatially map neurons that were recruited and strongly responded during the activation of innate defensive behaviors, for example exposure to predator scent, a PTSD model used in the Fuzik Lab.
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Paloma Cordoba
Paloma Cordoba was an Erasmus internship student in the Fuzik Lab. She came from a medical background and was interested to learn how translational neuroscience research and medical practice could complement each other. She had a training to understand the anatomy of the serial and parallel major pathways that are governing innate defensive behaviors in the mouse brain. She also learned to use immunohistochemistry to reveal identity and activity patterns of neuronal populations.
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Marianne Bizzozzero Hiriart
Marianne Bizzozzero Hiriart was a postdoctoral researcher in the Fuzik Lab. Her main background is GABAergic regulation in the hypothalamus. She is interested in understanding the defensive behaviors driven by hypothalamic pathways and uses viral pathway labeling and in vivo optogenetic activation of the labeled pathways during behavior in awake mice.
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Gabriela Da Cruz Meda
Gabriela Da Cruz Meda was a master student in the Fuzik Lab. She worked on understanding the anatomy of collateral hypothalamic projections that innervate the brain stem and brain pathways the drive defensive behavior such as the anterior hypothalamus.
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Samuel Edgar
Samuel Edgar was a master student in the Fuzik Lab. He worked on the spatial mapping of lateral hypothalamic neurons that innervate the lateral habenula and medial hypothalamic neurons that project to the periaqueductal gray matter.