Dr. Jonathan Tang

Biography

Dr. Tang's research interests focus on experience-dependent effects on brain circuits, behavior, subjective experiences, and mental health. His work examines early adverse experiences associated with psychiatric and personality disorders. Dr. Tang's research group integrates approaches from artificial intelligence, structural biology, bioengineering, developmental biology, neuroscience, and psychology/psychiatry. A major limitation in brain research is the inability to access molecular and cellular components rapidly and comprehensively. To facilitate research, his group is developing generalizable strategies for generating conditionally stable nanobodies and applied sensors to detect and manipulate desired molecules in specific cell populations. Their studies aim to apply these tools in mice to understand the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying action learning processes. The research integrates state-of-the-art technologies, including wireless inertial sensors, optogenetics, miniscope imaging, fiber photometry, and neuropixel recordings, to rigorously investigate how mice make the right actions for rewards. Moreover, to overcome the limitations of animal models in studying subjective repertoires, Dr. Tang's group is applying AI models to psychological structures. They focus on integrating multi-level approaches to understand rigid learning patterns associated with disorders such as autism and OCD, as well as experience-associated psychiatric disorders like PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorders.

Research Interests