Jacques Barik

The paper identifies valence-specific neuronal ensembles in the laterodorsal tegmentum that encode salient stimuli and modulate motivated behavior through optogenetic reactivation.

The paper identifies age-related changes in the hippocampus-accumbens pathway in mice and links them to cognitive decline, showing that reducing pathway excitability can improve memory.

This study investigates how working memory dynamics change over repeated task performance, showing that the dorsolateral striatum supports automation while the medial prefrontal cortex becomes less critical over time.

This study shows that dopamine signaling in the medial prefrontal cortex encodes action value during reversal learning through D1/NMDA and D2/NMDA receptor heteromers.

This study shows that cocaine-induced changes in cholinergic projections from the LDT to the NAc bidirectionally affect cocaine's reinforcing effects.

This study shows that adolescent nicotine exposure disrupts dopamine circuit development, leading to adult vulnerability to nicotine, which can be reversed by restoring dopamine pathway balance.

This study shows that SWI/SNF chromatin remodelers are essential for behavioral and transcriptional adaptations to stress and cocaine, with gene inactivation leading to resilience and reduced gene expression.

This study shows that p-Cresol, a microbial metabolite more abundant in ASD patients, induces ASD-like behaviors in mice through gut microbiota-dependent mechanisms.

The paper shows disrupting D2-NMDA receptor heteromerization blocks cocaine's rewarding effects without affecting natural reward processing in mice and humans.