Welcome to the Dong Laboratory
Supplemental Information for Published Work
Emotion and motivation are two basic, interlinked concepts in
neuroscience, with ramifying connotations across psychology and
philosophy. Thus far, neuroscience cannot yet provide coherent
explanations for why some stimuli cheer us up whereas others
make us sad, why my fishing trip to a picturesque river is given
up in favor of typing this paragraph, and why reading and
memorizing knowledge that used to be so boring for me as a kid
become so rewarding after a 20-year of “habituation”.
Our long-term research goal is to understand the
neural mechanisms underlying emotional and motivational
responses. We focus on animal models related to drug addiction.
Addictive drugs are among the most effective and efficient
external stimuli that evoke the strongest emotional and
motivational states. Once “hijacked” into the addictive state,
an individual will be primarily motivated by an exceedingly
strong emotional state, the drug-seeking/craving state.
We hypothesize that strong incentive stimuli,
such as experience of drugs of abuse, shift the emotional and
motivational states by rewiring the neural circuits in the brain
reward pathway. To test this hypothesis, we have been examining
several novel forms of neural plasticity upon exposure to
cocaine.
Two related research areas are depression, which
is characterized in part as a lack of motivation, and sleep,
which
modulates the emotional and motivational state
across most species.
These lines of research in the laboratory are
currently carried out by several highly motivated young souls,
who are equipped with a combination of molecular, cellular,
electrophysiological, and behavioral expertise.
Below, Dong Lab Members 2008
(left) and 2010 (right)
