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An Alphabetized List of PAgesAn Alphabetized List of PAges
  Yan Dong, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Office: NSc2
Phone: 509-335-5960
Fax: 509-335-4650
email: yandong@vetmed.wsu.edu
Lab Website: www.vetmed.wsu.edu/Donglab
     (lab site under construction)
 

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 understanding 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 be so pleasant. However, after repeated exposure, drug-elicited motivation becomes stronger and stronger and eventually

    



Dr. Yan Dong
 

overrides other motivational inputs, resulting in robust drug-seeking 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

Hu, X., Dong, Y., Zhang, Z., White, F.J., 2005 Dopamine D2 Receptor-Mediated Increase of Voltage-Sensitive Na+ Currents Is Modulated by Ca2+/Calcineurin Signaling in Rat Nucleus Accumbens Neurons. Journal of Neurophysiology. 93(3):1406-17.

B.K. Yee, R. Keist, L. von Boehmer, R. Studer, D.Benke, Y. Dong, R.C. Malenka, J.-M. Fritschy, H. Bluethmann, H.Möhler. J. Feldon, U. Rudolph. 2005. A schizophrenia-related sensorimotor deficit links alpha 3-containing GABAA receptors to a dopamine hyperfunction. Pro. Natl. Acad. Sci. 102 (47): 17154-9.

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.

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