About

Dr. Yi Zuo is the Principal Investigator of the Zuo Lab, located at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying biological processes, as indicated by his role within the MCD Biology department and his involvement in lab projects related to biology and molecular research. He is actively engaged in scientific research, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in his field, and maintains a professional presence through his email (yizuo@ucsc.edu) and social media handle (@YiZuoUCSC).

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Pharmacology
• Immunology

Selected publications

• Experimental investigation of the fatigue performance of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy subjected to shot peening

  Journal of Physics Conference Series · 2026-04-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract This work systematically investigates the fatigue behavior of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy plates subjected to shot peening under five different intensity levels. Fatigue tests were conducted, and the detailed fatigue rating (DFR) was calculated to quantify fatigue improvement. The results show that shot peening significantly enhances fatigue resistance, with a maximum DFR gain of 48.50%. As the peening intensity increases, the fatigue performance first improves and then declines, indicating that an intermediate peening intensity provides the optimal enhancement. These findings provide experimental support for selecting appropriate shot peening parameters in engineering applications.

  PublisherDOI

• The Role of Music Therapy in Enhancing Social, Emotional, and Cognitive Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

  Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media · 2025-03-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Music therapy has emerged as a promising intervention for enhancing the emotional regulation and social reciprocity of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), their cognitive development, and fostering good relations between them and their parents. ASD has an impact on social interaction, emotional regulation, and cognitive development, which in turn affects individuals and their families. Music therapy can deal with these challenges. It promotes emotional expression, social interaction, cognitive abilities, and parent-child cooperation, enabling families to support the overall development of the child. This literature review discusses the use of music therapy to help manage the emotions of children with autism, helping with reciprocal social interactions, building up stronger cognitive functions, and relationships within a family. It synthesizes current research findings, highlighting how music therapy creates opportunities for meaningful emotional engagement, supports the development of social skills, promotes cognitive growth, and empowers parents through family-centered interventions. Additionally, music therapy improves joint attention and imitation by improving core social and emotional development abilities. It also strengthens the cognitive skills necessary for adaptive functioning. Moreover, family members participating in music therapy sessions can better understand their child’s abilities and learn effective strategies to promote developmentally appropriate skill acquisition within the home.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Research on grape leaf disease detection method based on NMA-YOLOv8n

  ITM Web of Conferences · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access

  In response to the low inefficiency and high misjudgement rate of manually observing grape leaf diseases, an improved YOLOv8n grape leaf disease detection model NMA-YOLOv8n is proposed. Firstly, the global nonlinear attention NBL was introduced in the neck network, which enhances the backbone feature extraction capability by fusing the local and non-local attention, enabling the network to equally focus on small and normal targets. Secondly, the MPDCIoU loss function is designed to replace the original Bbox loss function, improving the regression accuracy of the bounding box. At the output end, the detection performance of the algorithm for small targets is improved by designing the AFPN small target detection head. The experimental results show that the NMA-YOLOv8n model mAP@0.5 reaches 94.7%, 1.7% higher than YOLOv8n; the FPS reaches 124.6 frames/sec, which can meet the real-time detection requirements, and has higher detection accuracy and speed compared with other five mainstream target detection models.NMA-YOLOv8n provides grape disease detection with a better method, which has certain significance for the prevention and control of grape diseases.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A dynamic enhanced electrical stimulation system coordinates non-neural cells via single-input cues for neuro-vascularized bone regeneration

  Chemical Engineering Journal · 2025-11-25

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Cross-Species Framework for Emotional Well-Being and Brain Aging

  JAMA Psychiatry · 2025-05-07 · 2 citations

  review

  Importance: Emotional well-being (EWB) is an emerging therapeutic target for managing and preventing symptoms associated with Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD). However, more research is needed to establish causal inferences between brain changes, EWB, and behavioral changes observed in typical aging and ADRD. Observations: This article presents a framework for using a cross-species behavioral neuroscience approach to study EWB and brain aging, adopting a well-established biobehavioral model that highlights the reciprocal roles of brain changes, EWB, and ADRD symptoms. First, the challenges and opportunities in this field are reviewed. Then, a practical solution to improve comparability between animal and human studies is proposed. Conclusions and Relevance: The goal is to draw comprehensive parallels and distinctions that could enhance the understanding of the mechanisms linking brain aging, EWB, and ADRD symptomatic disturbances across different species.

  PublisherDOI

• Intranasal delivery of hypoxia-preconditioned extracellular vesicles derived from BMSCs alleviates neuroinflammation and brain dysfunction in TBI

  Stem Cell Research & Therapy · 2025-10-07 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to secondary injuries, such as neuroinflammation and brain dysfunction, which is a critical challenge in clinical treatment. The use of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) is one of the potential strategies to treat TBI by alleviating inflammation, reducing neuronal loss, and promoting brain function recovery. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) released by BMSCs are regarded as an ideal alternative to cell therapy. This study showed that hypoxia significantly enhanced the release of EVs from BMSCs, and hypoxia- preconditioning (H-EVs) treatment significant effects on promoting microglial M2 polarization, improving endothelial cell activity, and inhibiting the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps, ultimately accelerating brain function recovery. Mechanistically, single-cell sequencing revealed a significant reduction in specificity protein 1 (SP1) expression and a change in the proportion of infiltrating inflammatory cell subsets in brain tissues after the H-EVs treatment. Hypoxia-preconditioning changed the miRNA microarray analysis results in H-EVs, such that miR-145-5p negatively regulated nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) by targeting SP1, induced microglial M2 polarization, alleviated endothelial cell dysfunction, and promoted brain function recovery. Intranasal delivery of hypoxia-induced BMSC-EVs showed great potential in the treatment of secondary TBI and revealed a novel mechanism by which miR-145-5p regulates inflammatory response and intercellular communication by inhibiting the SP1/NF-κB axis. Hypoxic preconditioning enhances the secretory capacity of BMSCs for extracellular vesicles, thereby conferring a more potent anti-inflammatory effect. Intranasal H-EVs delivery significantly promotes the activation of M2 microglia after TBI, thereby alleviating the apoptosis of endothelial cells and neurons. This is the first study to show that H-EVs can regulate microglial polarization via the miR-145-5p/SP1/NF-κB pathway, alleviate endothelial cell dysfunction, inhibit the formation and recruitment of neutrophil extracellular traps in the brain injury areas, and promote the recovery of cortical cerebral blood flow. This is the first instance of using single-cell sequencing to reveal the differences between the H-EVs and normoxia-preconditioning (N-EVs) in TBI treatment. Behavioral experiments demonstrated that H-EVs treatment significantly improved the neurological and motor function recovery of TBI rats.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wailing Barbarians and Bloody Tears: Affect and Self-other Imagination in Medieval Eastern Eurasia

  The Chinese Historical Review · 2025-01-02

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Persistent cortical excitatory neuron dysregulation in adult Chd8 haploinsufficient mice

  Research Square · 2025-08-05 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mechanism of Microbiota-Gut-Brain in Perimenopausal Depression: An Inflammatory Perspective

  Expert Reviews in Molecular Medicine · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  reviewOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Perimenopausal women often experience physiological and psychological decline due to the effects of oestrogen fluctuations and the decline of ovarian function, leading to significantly increased depression rates, decreases in the quality of life and mental health issues. Studies have shown that the gut microbiota exerts anti-perimenopausal depression (PMD) effects via the microbiota-gut-brain (MGB) axis, the mechanisms of which may be related to inflammation. In this review, we discuss the effects and mechanisms of gut microbiota in PMD and provide new insights for future PMD treatment. METHODS: This review elaborates on the role of MGB axis in PMD from different aspects of inflammation, including gut microbiota metabolites, inflammatory signaling pathways, and clinical applications. RESULTS: Disorders of gut microbiota and decreased levels of gut microbiota metabolites (short-chain fatty acids, monoamine neurotransmitters) may cause PMD. The mechanism of intestinal microbiota-mediated inflammation may be related to TLR4/NF-κB pathway, NOD-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome pathway and JAK-STAT pathway. At the same time, it was found that gut microbiota (probiotics, prebiotics, etc.) had good therapeutic potential in the treatment of PMD. CONCLUSIONS: MGB axis mediated inflammation may play an important role in PMD. The application of gut microbiota in the treatment of PMD patients has profound clinical transformation value, but a lot of efforts are still needed.

  PublisherDOI

• The effect of shot peening on the fatigue performance of the R-region in 2024-T351 machined components

  Journal of Physics Conference Series · 2025-06-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract To investigate the effect of shot peening on the fatigue performance of the R-region in 2024-T351 machined components, a specially designed test specimen was created. It can cause fatigue cracks to initiate in the R-region. The R-region of the specimen was subjected to shot-peening treatment, and fatigue tests were conducted on both the shot-peened and unpeened specimens. The fatigue quality of both the shot-peened and unpeened specimens was obtained by processing the test data. The DFR evaluation system was used to calculate the DFR values before and after shot peening. The results showed that the fatigue performance of the shot-peened specimen in the R-region was improved by 66.2% compared to the unpeened specimen. Therefore, the design of the test specimen can be used to study the fatigue performance of the R-region, and in engineering applications, shot peening can be used to directly treat the R-region of 2024-T351 machined components to enhance the fatigue performance of the R-region or temporary repairs of aircraft structures.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AG031871

  NIH · $1.5M · 2014

• Dynamics and molecular mechanism of synaptic connectivity change during learning

  NIH · $2.1M · 2014–2020

• Nano-Bio Interactions at the Surface of Pulmonary Surfactant Films

  NSF · $301k · 2016–2021

• NIH Grant R56MH094449

  NIH · $372k · 2012

• NIH Grant R01MH094449

  NIH · $1.5M · 2017

Frequent coauthors

• Ju Lu

  22 shared

• Xinzhu Yu

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  11 shared

• Toshio Narahashi

  10 shared

• Jay Z. Yeh

  Northwestern University

  10 shared

• Caitlin E. Moyer

  National Institute on Drug Abuse

  8 shared

• Joel Kubby

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  7 shared

• Michael J. Conboy

  University of California, Berkeley

  7 shared

• Irina M. Conboy

  University of California, Berkeley

  7 shared

Labs

• Zuo LabPI

Education

• PhD, NUIN

  Northwestern University

  2002

• BS, Biology

  Tsinghua University

  1998