Welcome to the Stuber lab website.  We are located on the 4th floor of the Neuroscience Research Building at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.   The major goal of our research is to delineate the neural circuits involved in the manifestation of addiction and neuropsychiatric disorders.  To accomplish this, we take a multidisciplinary approach, relying on techniques to selectively perturb and monitor neural activity in genetically specified populations of mammalian neurons both in vitro and in vivo in behaving animals.  Channelrhodopsin (ChR2), a light-activated cation channel  can be genetically introduced into select neurons in the brain for optical excitation on a physiologically relevant timescale upon exposure to blue light.  Conversely, halorhodopsin (NpHR) can also be introduced into neurons to reversibly inactivate them in the presence of green-orange light.  Using these and other optogenetic tools in conjunction with transgenic animals, it is possible perturb the activity patterns of many genetically, anatomically, and functionally distinct neural circuit elements to determine their contribution to various behavioral aspects related to neuropsychiatric illnesses. 

Please contact us if you are interested in our research or would like to discuss optogenetic experimentation or potential collaborations.