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News & Recent Achievements

Cholecystokinin release triggered by NMDA receptors produces LTP and sound–sound associative memory

Prof. He Jufang and his research team, after discovering in 2014 that the neuromodulator, "Cholecystokinin" (CCK), plays a key role in memory formation, Recently, Studies have found that high frequency electrical stimulation can induce CCK release, while CCK release is controlled by N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. This study will provide the basis for new treatments that will help patients recover their memories in the future.

More News & Achievements

Introduction

We hope that our laboratory can contribute to our understanding on how we remember events, how we attend to specific sensory inputs and how we think. At the same time, we hope that we can translate our understanding to clinical applications.

Currently we are focusing on the following questions:

  • How the medial temporal lobe switches associative memory encoding in the neocortex?
  • What is the switching chemical for the memory encoding?
  • How NMDA receptors and cholecystokinin (CCK) are involved in the process and how do they interact with each other?
  • what are the differences between CCK that are released from excitatory and inhibitory neurons?

We adopted a wide range of methodology including electrophysiological, optogenetic, behavioral, pharmacological and molecular methods to answer questions listed above.

Prof. Jufang He