Profile

 I got the bachelor degree from Zhejiang University, School of Medicine in 1994 and received Ph.D. in 2004 with the supervision of Prof. Ju-fang He at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. For the dissertation research, I used in vivo intracellular recording technique to elucidate the firing properties of neurons in the auditory thalamus and investigated the corticofugal modulatory effect of auditory cortex on them by electrically activating the corticofugal projection.   Now I focused on the sleep-wake modulation of specific neuronal types in the basal forebrain and the parvicellular reticular nucleus using optogenetic tools and clarified the circuit mechanisms using monosynaptic virus tracing and multi-electrode recording.   My current research is focused in: 1) The neuronal and circuit mechanisms of higher brain functions such as sensory processing, sleep-wake modulation, and emotion-related diseases such as anxiety and depression, learning and memory. 2) Function of glial cells in the sensory process by selectively activating glia in the rodent somatosensory cortex by optogenetics.   I host two National Natural Science Foundation of China programs, one National Key Technology R&D Program, and one Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province program.