Thank you to the @yulonglilab.bsky.social
for the generation and characterization of the GRABeCB sensor, which made this study possible.

Thank you to the Stella lab, the Land lab, and Anthony English
for the continued discussion and helping to refine my story, and especially for the creation and validation of the Linear Track pipeline for supervised behavioral classification.

Lastly, I would like to extend my gratitude to all of our wonderful collaborators both within the UW community and abroad.

Overall this report uncovers a fundamental molecular mechanism that involves localized eCB production in the regulation of engagement in reward-seeking behaviors through gain-control of an anatomically and genetically defined thalamo-striatal circuit.

Furthermore, using novel pose estimation and machine learning algorithms combined with 1-photon imaging, we found that engagement in reward-seeking is encoded by specific ensembles of genetically defined NAc neurons that receive aPVT input.

We found that eCBs are released in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) during reward seeking, and that these eCBs regulate engagement in reward-seeking behaviors through retrograde inhibition excitatory terminals arising from the anterior paraventricular thalamus (aPVT).

In this study, we brought to bear several novel tools and approaches to understand how endocannabinoid signaling regulates reward-seeking behaviors, which are highly evolutionarily conserved, and importantly disrupted in numerous psychiatric and substance use disorders.

Since my undergraduate research, I have been investigating the eCB system, the most widely expressed neuromodulatory system in the brain. However, this ubiquitous expression as well as the lipophilic nature of the ligands have made investigation if its role in vivo difficult.

You know you’ve goofed up when the official @npp-journal.bsky.social account starts ribbing you 😅

Also, as of last month I am officially on the market, so please swing by to discuss potential opportunities!