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  • J. Tiago Goncalves, Ph.D.

J. Tiago Goncalves, Ph.D.

J. Tiago Goncalves

Assistant Professor, Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience

Area of Research: Adult neurogenesis; Neuronal development; Learning and Memory; Aging; Memory; In vivo Imaging; Stem Cells

Contact Information

718.430.8524718.430.8821tiago.goncalves@einsteinmed.edu

Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Rose F. Kennedy Center

1410 Pelham Parkway South, Room 236
Bronx, NY 10461

Research Profiles

More Resources: Lab website

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Professional Interests

Gonçalves Lab Website: https://goncalveslab.org

 

Our lab studies the circuit physiology of the hippocampus, and specifically how environment, aging and inflammation can modulate memory and learning. We use state-of-the-art in vivo two-photon Ca2+ imaging techniques in awake mice and we were pioneers in applying these imaging methodologies to the study of adult neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus (Gonçalves et al. 2016a). 

The DG is one of the few regions of the mammalian brain that keeps adding new neurons through adulthood in what probably constitutes the most robust form of neuronal plasticity in the adult brain. Adult-born neurons contribute to memory formation and defects in neurogenesis have been associated with several human neurological and psychiatric diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. In addition adult-born neurons have also been used to study neuronal development.

We are particularly interested in understanding how adult neurogenesis in the DG may support hippocampal function, playing a role in memory and learning. In order to understand the function of adult-born neurons in the circuits underlying spatial memory we are studying the encoding of position in the hippocampus, including ‘place cells’ i.e. neurons that fire primarily when an animal is at a specific location.

We have previously found that adult neurogenesis improves the precision of neural representations of space in young mice (Frechou et al. 2022), when the mice are placed in a novel context. We also found that these representations, encoding for the position of the mouse within its surroundings, become less precise as animals age (McDermott et al. 2023). Our current work is building on these initial findings to identify the molecular and cellular pathways that mediate the effects of environment on spatial memory and cognition.

Current directions

We are currently investigating the role of microglia and neuro-immune pathways in the formation of memories and neural representations of space in the hippocampus. Additionally we are interested in identifying the molecular determinants of spatial encoding by obtaining transcriptional profiles of previously imaged neurons, thus establishing a link between the molecular and neural encoding properties of individual cells.

 

 

 


Selected Publications

McDermott K.D., Frechou M.A., Jordan J.T., Martin S.S., Gonçalves J.T., Delayed formation of neural representations of space in aged mice. Aging Cell (2023) in press

Frechou M.A., Martin S.S., McDermott K.D., Gökhan Ş., Tomé W.A., Coen-Cagli R., Gonçalves J.T., Adult neurogenesis improves spatial information encoding in the mouse hippocampus. bioRxiv; doi: 10.1101/2022.11.30.518622v1 (2022)

Jordan J.T., McDermott K.D., Frechou M.A., Shtrahman M.,Gonçalves J. T., Treadmill-based task for assessing spatial memory in head-fixed mice, STAR Protoc., 2, 100770 (2021) 

Guo N., McDermott K.D., Shih Y.T., Zanga H., Ghosh D., Gonçalves J.T., Sahay A., Transcriptional regulation of neural stem cell expansion in the adult hippocampus, eLife, 11:e72195 (2022) PMCID: PMC8820733

Nasrallah K., Frechou M.A., Yoon Y.J., Persaud S., Gonçalves J.T., Castillo P.E., Seizure-induced strengthening of a recurrent excitatory circuit in the dentate gyrus is proconvulsant, PNAS 119(32):e2201151119 (2022)

Gronska-Peski M., Gonçalves J.T., Hébert J.M., Enriched Environment Promotes Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis through FGFRs. J. Neurosci.;41(13), 2899-2910 (2021) 

Mansour A.A., Gonçalves J.T., Bloyd C., Li H., Fernandes S., Quang D., Johnston S., Parylak S., Jin X., Gage F.H., An in vivo model of functional and vascularized human brain organoids, Nature Biotech., 36(5), 432-441 (2018)

Gonçalves J. T. *, Schafer S.T. * (equal contribution), Gage F.H., Adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus: from stem cells to behavior, Cell, 167, 897-914 (2016)

Gonçalves J.T., Bloyd C.W., Shtrahman M, Johnston S.T., Schafer S.T., Parylak S.L., Thanh T., Chang T., Gage F.H., In vivo imaging of dendritic pruning in dentate granule cells, Nat. Neurosci., 19(6), 788-791 (2016)

Related News

  • Studying How Adult-Born Neurons Affect Cognition
    Research Brief
    Studying How Adult-Born Neurons Affect Cognition

    Jul 13, 2022

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