Brain Health, Injury, and Disease

What We Do

Eisch Lab projects span genetic, molecular, cellular, circuit, and functional/behavioral levels, and are/or have been funded by NASA and NIH (including National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute on Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, and National Institute of Aging).

Schematic of a mouse brain depicting the entorhinal cortex (lEnt, mEnt), a main input to the dentate gyrus.

Many Eisch Lab projects involve the dentate gyrus, a part of the mammalian hippocampal formation involved in a range of functions, including memory, mood regulation, and reward processing. When the mammalian dentate gyrus is sectioned into thin slices and visualized with immunohistochemical dyes, it has a characteristic "sideways V" shape, as seen in the yellow and beige associated schematic.

We use a range of techniques to map, measure, and eventually manipulate aspects of dentate gyrus circuitry of rodents. The associated schematic depicts our use of viral-mediated gene transfer and chemogenetics to label cells in the entorhinal cortex (lEnt, mEnt) that project to subregions of the dentate gyrus: the mMol and oMol which flank the dentate gyrus granule cell layer (GCL). The teal photomicrographs show actual mouse brain tissue from such a stereotaxically-injected mouse, where the cell bodies are evident in the lEnt and mEnt and their terminal projections to the Mol flank the GCL. Using such an approach, we can manipulate discrete aspects of hippocampal circuitry, and test its involvement in dentate gyrus-dependent behaviors relevant to cognition, stress, mood-regulation, and reward processing.

A sample of current/recently completed Eisch Lab projects:

Role of dentate gyrus circuits in high-order cognition, such as pattern separation
- Read about our NIH grant on this topic, "Behavioral pattern separation: orchestration by lateral entorhinal cortex-hippocampal circuitry"
Brain-bladder communication:
- Early life bladder inflammatory events in female mice lead to subsequent lower urinary tract symptoms in adulthood (in collaboration with the lab Steven Zderic and supported by NIH)
- Chronic stress and bladder control: role of Barrington's Nucleus (in collaboration with the lab of Jason Van Batavia and helping to advance his NIH K08 grant)
Effects of high-energy space radiation on hippocampal health and cognition and assessment of a pharmacological countermeasure (supported by a NASA HERO grant to Sanghee Yun)
Role of neuroglia in the sex-dependent impact of early-life hypoxia (in collaboration with the team of Danielle Barber and helping to advance her K12 Aims)

Other ongoing Eisch Lab projects:

Functional impact of dentate gyrus circuit manipulation on mood-relevant behaviors and response to psychosocial stress
Impact of psychosocial stress on hippocampal-dependent cognition
Define the functional circuitry and microcircuitry of the dentate gyrus
Drug abuse and relapse: roles of dentate gyrus circuits on maladaptive contextual memories
Sex differences in developmental aspects of neuroglia