Considering both good and bad is fundamental for future planning and decision-making. When animals forage, they may consider how tasty the food is, how much food is available…
An exciting aspect of neuroscience is the ability to peek into the brain, measuring the activity of neurons in behaving animals. Electrophysiology allows us to listen to the…
Dopamine plays an outsized role in the public imagination, acting as a ‘happiness’ chemical, the drug that causes psychosis, or the pill that allows frozen people to move…
Neir Eshel, a recent PhD graduate from the Uchida Lab, will deliver this year’s Larry Katz Memorial Prize Lecture at the Cold Spring Harbor conference on Neuronal Circuits…
Imagine you are a child hoping to get a teddy bear from your parents as a birthday gift. What if they gave you a box of candies instead?…
(l to r) Nao Uchida, Sachie K Ogawa, William Menegas, Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida and Yoh Isogai Dopamine, originally referred to as a pleasure molecule, is now one of the…
Nao Uchida (l) and Neir Eshel Say you’re at a supermarket, staring at two cartons of ice cream: chocolate and caramel. Before making your choice, you try to…
(l to r) Mackenzie Amoroso, Jeremiah Cohen, and Nao Uchida Serotonin is one of the most widespread and mysterious neurotransmitters in the brain. It has been proposed to…
(l to r) Sachie K. Ogawa, Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida, and Nao Uchida When I told my niece in medical school that I am studying dopamine, she looked surprised, asking,…
As a postdoctoral researcher at Cold Spring Harbor, Naoshige (Nao) Uchida adapted a method for studying decision-making behavior, originally developed for primates, for rodents. (see video below) Rodent…
