Alexei Y. Morozov

About

Alexei Y. Morozov, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and also holds a position in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the School of Medicine. His research focuses on uncovering the neuronal substrates of social behaviors, with particular emphasis on empathy, fear, and emotional trauma. Using rodent models, Dr. Morozov's laboratory investigates neuronal circuits involved in empathy, such as the communication between the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the amygdala, and how these circuits are altered in pathological conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, psychopathy, autism, and schizophrenia. His team develops genetic and behavioral mouse models to identify changes in neuronal circuits during the transition to pathological states and employs techniques such as optogenetic manipulation to establish causal links between circuits and behaviors. Dr. Morozov's work includes studying how emotional distress influences NMDA receptor function in the amygdala and how alterations in hippocampal activity relate to traits of psychopathy. His research aims to generate knowledge that will help relieve the burden of mental disease on human society by understanding the brain mechanisms underlying social and emotional behaviors.

Research topics

• Biology
• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Endocrinology
• Chemistry
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• EGR1 recruits TET1 to shape the brain methylome during development and upon neuronal activity

  Nature Communications · 2019-08-29 · 154 citations

  articleOpen access

  Life experience can leave lasting marks, such as epigenetic changes, in the brain. How life experience is translated into storable epigenetic information remains largely unknown. With unbiased data-driven approaches, we predicted that Egr1, a transcription factor important for memory formation, plays an essential role in brain epigenetic programming. We performed EGR1 ChIP-seq and validated thousands of EGR1 binding sites with methylation patterns established during postnatal brain development.…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conserved features of anterior cingulate networks support observational learning across species

  Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · 2019-09-08 · 57 citations

  reviewOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Neuronal Rap1 Regulates Energy Balance, Glucose Homeostasis, and Leptin Actions

  Cell Reports · 2016-09-01 · 50 citations

  articleOpen access

  The CNS contributes to obesity and metabolic disease; however, the underlying neurobiological pathways remain to be fully established. Here, we show that the small GTPase Rap1 is expressed in multiple hypothalamic nuclei that control whole-body metabolism and is activated in high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity. Genetic ablation of CNS Rap1 protects mice from dietary obesity, glucose imbalance, and insulin resistance in the periphery and from HFD-induced neuropathological changes in the hypothala…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rap1 GTPase is required for mouse lens epithelial maintenance and morphogenesis

  Developmental Biology · 2015-07-23 · 31 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Prefrontal-amygdala plasticity enabled by observational fear

  Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019-02-13 · 27 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Reorganization of PFC inhibitory network by observational fear

  NIH · $443k · 2016–2019

• Disinhibition-assisted LTP as a method for testing role of neuronal circuits in behavior

  NIH · $566k · 2018–2021

• Silent synapses and plasticity of prefrontal-amygdala pathway after emotional distress

  NIH · $443k · 2015–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Wataru Ito

  Keio University

  113 shared

• Eric R. Kandel

  26 shared

• Ying Huang

  XinHua Hospital

  26 shared

• Steven A. Siegelbaum

  16 shared

• Yong Xu

  Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine

  14 shared

• Howard Huang

  Virginia Tech

  12 shared

• Vanessa L. Brayman

  Virginia Tech

  12 shared

• Brendon Fusco

  Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey

  10 shared

Education

• Ph. D., Biochemistry

  University of Illinois at Chicago

  1996

• M.S./Biochemistry

  Lomonosov Moscow State University

  1987

Awards & honors

• Graduate College Fellowship, University of Illinois at Chica…
• Dorothea H. Fleming Student Research Fund Award, University…
• Certificate of Merit for Outstanding Student Research Presen…

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