Page 20 - Abacoa Community News - Decembe '23

Page 20, Abacoa
MPFI’s Wang Lab Awarded $1M Grant To Study

Mechanism Behind Memory Decline In Alzheimer’s

Max Planck the analysis of big data, and build models to better
Florida will be explain the experimental findings.
able to expand “When it comes to the brain there are so many
their research questions remaining, and the answers cannot come
program to investigate the fast enough. Adding this support from the NIH
neural circuits underlying to MPFI’s already exceptional research resources
Alzheimer’s disease with new will allow us to make greater progress toward
support. The National Institute understanding the role of these inputs in memory
on Aging of the National formation and stability,” she said.
Institutes of Health (NIH) has Research reported in this publication was
awarded Dr. Yingxue Wang supported by the National Institute on Aging of
$1,038,819 over three years the National Institutes of Health under Award
as part of the Alzheimer’s Number R01AG085899. The content is solely the
Disease Initiative Fund. The responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily
research will shed new light represent the official views of the National Institutes
on how the brain forms new of Health.
memories and maintains
them over time and what can lead to memory decline during
Alzheimer’s disease.
Turning our daily experiences into memories involves a
brain region called the hippocampus. Among the many signals
the hippocampus receives, cholinergic inputs from the basal
forebrain are crucial for learning and memory. As we age,
cholinergic inputs become less effective at generating a neuronal
response and deteriorate in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s
disease. While scientists understand that cholinergic function is
an integral part of memory formation, exactly how it impacts
the hippocampal circuits remains largely unknown.
“We are excited and honored to receive this generous
funding, which will significantly impact our ability to answer
important questions about how we make and maintain
memories,” said Wang. “This grant not only advances our
research but symbolizes the collective hope that drives us to
study this devastating condition. My lab and I are profoundly
grateful for this trust and support.”
As part of this project, Wang will collaborate with Dr. Alex
Roxin of the Centre de Recerca Matematica, Spain, who will be
funded separately by the Spanish Research Agency, AEI.
Wang joined Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience
(MPFI) in 2018 and leads the Neuronal Mechanisms of Episodic
Memory research group. Before that, she was a research scientist
at the Janelia Research Campus of Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, where she studied the hippocampal neuronal activities
that represent memory traces.
Trained as an electrical engineer, Wang completed her
graduate study at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Zurich. During her Ph.D. training, she designed brain-
inspired computational systems on silicon chips. These fully
reconfigurable systems incorporated electronic circuits of
a network of neurons with dendrites and synapses. Using
these systems as simulation tools, she also investigated the
computational principles native to a neuron with active dendrites.
Principals of engineering greatly inform Wang’s work
at MPFI, which combines experimental techniques with
computational modeling, enabling the Wang lab to accelerate

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