My name is Tran Hoang Mai, and I am a first-year PhD student in the Medical Life Sciences Program at the Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama. My research focuses on the relationship between experience-dependent maturation of neural circuits and behavioral changes in a mouse lateral habenula nucleus (LHb) model, aiming to understand the mechanisms and functions of LHb in stress-induced behavioral changes.

The LHb in the dorsal diencephalon is known to be highly stress-sensitive during early life, and repeated stress during this period has been shown to cause long-lasting behavioral changes in adulthood, resulting in anxiety- and depression-like behaviors. This finding indicates that LHb maturation is regulated by experiences in early life. However, the underlying neuronal circuit mechanisms remain unknown.

In my PhD project, I will investigate the mechanisms of experience-dependent plastic circuit maturation and behavioral changes in a mouse LHb model. Changes in LHb mRNA expression in response to early-life stress will be analyzed using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq). I will search for genes whose expression changes in response to stressful experiences and is associated with anxiety- and depression-like behaviors. Furthermore, I will manipulate the expression of candidate genes in the LHb and examine their causal roles in behavioral regulation.