Assistant Professor
Office: NSc2
Phone: 509-335-5960
Fax: 509-335-4650
email:
yandong@vetmed.wsu.edu
Lab Website:
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/DongLab/
From food foraging to social practice, motivation-driven behaviors make
up our everyday waking life. Why are we able to be motivated? why are we
motivated more easily by some incentives than others? and how do we
translate the motivational signal into action? Answering these questions
is not only of philosophical and theoretical interest, but also
important to develop clinical strategies in treating motivational
disorders, such as depression, apathy, and compulsive behaviors.
Our long-term research interest is to understand the neural
mechanisms through which the brain perceives, differentiates, and
prioritizes the motivational signals. We use drug addiction as the
animal model. The initial drug experience may not always be pleasant.
However, after repeated exposure, drug-elicited motivation becomes
stronger and stronger and eventually overrides
other motivational inputs, resulting in robust drug-craving
behaviors, or addiction. Our central hypothesis is that repeated
exposure to strong incentive stimuli, such as cocaine intake, rewires
the microcircuits within the brain reward pathway, leading to
pathological prioritization of drug-related motivation. We employ
multidisciplinary approaches including in vitro and in vivo
electrophysiological recordings, molecular manipulations, biochemical
assays and behavioral tests to examine this hypothesis.
Biographical Information
Yan Dong received a B.S. in Biological Science in 1993 from Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China. In 1997, he received a M.Sc. in Biophysics
also from Tsinghua University. In 2002, he received a Ph.D. in
Neuroscience from The Chicago Medical School. From 2002 to 2004, Dr.
Dong was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University School of
Medicine. From 2004 to 2006 Dr. Dong was a Senior Biologist at Merck
Research Laboratories. Dr. Dong joined WSU in 2006 as an Assistant
Professor in the Department of VCAPP and the Program in Neuroscience.
Selected Publications
Dong Y., and White, F. J., 2003. Dopamine D1-class receptors
selectively modulate a slowly inactivating potassium current in rat
prefrontal cortex pyramidal neurons. Journal of Neuroscience. 23(7):
2686-2695.
Saal, D.*, Dong, Y.*, A Bonci, and RC Malenka. 2003. Drugs of abuse
and stress trigger a common synaptic adaptation in dopamine neurons.
Neuron. 37:577-82.
Dong, Y*, Saal, S*, Thomas, M., Robinson, T., Bonci A. and Malenka,
R.C. 2004. Cocaine-induced potentiation of synaptic strength in dopamine
neurons: behavioral correlates in GluRA(-/-) mice. Pro. Natl. Acad. Sci.
101(39):14282-7.
Dong, Y., Cooper, D.C., Nasif, F., Hu, X and White, F.J., 2004.
Dopamine modulates inwardly rectifying potassium currents in medial
prefrontal cortex pyramidal neurons. Journal of Neuroscience 24 (12):
3077-3085.
Dong, Y*., Nasif, FJ., Tsui, J., Ju, W., Cooper, D.C., Hu, X.,
Malenka R.C., and, White, F.J. 2005. Cocaine-induced Plasticity of
Intrinsic Membrane Properties in Prefrontal Cortex Pyramidal Neurons:
Adaptations in Potassium Currents. Journal of Neuroscience. 25:936-940
Dong, Y., Green, T., Marie, H., Saal, D., Neve R, Nestler, E.J.,
Malenka, R.C. 2006. CREB modulates excitability of nucleus accumbens
neurons. Nature Neuroscience. 9(4): 475-7.
Dong*, Y. Tyszkiewicz*, J.P., Fong, T.M. 2006. Galanin and GALP
differentially modulate the neuronal activity in rat hypothalamic
arcuate nucleus neurons. J. Neurophysiol. 95(5): 3228-34.
Lee BR, Mu
P, Saal DB, Ulibarri C, Dong, Y. (2008) Homeostatic recovery of
downstate-upstate cycling in nucleus accumbens neurons. Neurosci Lett.
434(3): 282-8.
Huang YH, Lin Y, Brown T, Han MH, Saal D, Neve RL, Zukin RS, Sorg, BA,
Nestler EJ, Malenka RC, Dong Y.(2008) CREB modulates the upstate of
nucleus accumbens neurons: a critical role of synaptic NMDA receptors. J
Biol Chem 283(5): 2751-2760.
Mu P, Fuchs T, Saal DB, Sorg BA, Dong Y, Panksepp J. (2009) Repeated
cocaine exposure induces sensitization of ultrasonic vocalization in
rats. Neurosci Lett. 453(1): 31-5.
Ishikawa M, Mu P, Moyer J, Wolf JA, Quock RM, Davis NM, Schlter OM, Dong
Y. (2009) Homeostatic Synapse-driven Membrane Plasticity in Nucleus
Accumbens Neurons. Journal of Neuroscience. 29(18): 5820-31.
Huang YH, Lin Y, Mu P, Lee BR, Brown TE, Wayman GA, Marie H, Liu W, Yan
Z, Sorg. BA, Schlter OM, Zukin RS, Dong Y. (2009) In vivo Cocaine
Experience Generates Silent Synapses. Neuron. 63(1): 40-7
PubMed Publications (Note: PubMed Search may produce additional "Y.
Dong " authors.)
