Zijun Wang

Zijun Wang’s research focuses on how the environment influences brain reward pathways, especially stress and drug exposure, and how maladaptation can lead to disease states. Her long-term research goal is to develop novel pharmacotherapies for drug addiction by focusing on epigenetics and circuit mechanisms. She uses multidisciplinary approaches incorporating behaviors, pharmacology, molecular biology, confocal imaging, electrophysiology, virus-mediated gene transfer, bioinformatics, circuit mapping, chemogenetics, transgenic mice tools, and in vivo calcium imaging. She is using these techniques to explore how environmental stress-induced epigenetic disturbances cause disrupted gene expression, and how these epigenetic and transcriptional changes contribute to alterations in neuronal function and circuit connectivity and eventually lead to abnormal behaviors.