Qi Wang wins NIH grant to study pupil-linked arousal

Editor's note:

Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Qi Wang, who studies how the brain processes information about the outside world through the electrical activity of neurons, has won a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Project Grant (R01). The five-year, $2 million award will support his project to study the role of the locus coeruleus, a tiny nucleus buried deep in the brainstem, in regulating arousal in the brain that co-varies with pupil size.

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Laboratory for Neural Engineering and Control
March 09, 2017

Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Qi Wang, who studies how the brain processes information about the outside world through the electrical activity of neurons, has won a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Project Grant (R01). The five-year, $2 million award will support his project to study the role of the locus coeruleus, a tiny nucleus buried deep in the brainstem, in regulating arousal in the brain that co-varies with pupil size.

“We are very happy to get such generous support from the NIH for our study,” says Wang, whose Laboratory for Neural Engineering and Control is focused on deciphering the neural code and exploring the possibilities of “writing” information into the brain through brain-machine interfaces in order to restore or enhance brain functions.

“People who suffer from neuropsychiatric disorders, including anxiety, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders, often exhibit atypical task-evoked pupil dilation during cognitive tasks. But researchers are not sure what the underlying mechanism is that couples arousal and pupil size. While we think that the LC mediates this tight correlation, there has been little direct experimental evidence to support this hypothesis. We plan to use a combination of pupillometry, optogenetic perturbation, chronic single-unit recording, and behavioral tasks, to test this hypothesis.”

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Lab Member Awards
Columbia Affiliations
The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
The Center for Neural Engineering and Computation