Vadim Bolshakov

About

Vadim Bolshakov is a Professor of Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, affiliated with the Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on cellular and molecular mechanisms of learned and innate behaviors, with a particular emphasis on understanding fear-related behavioral responses at the neural network level. His laboratory combines electrophysiological, cell biological, and optogenetic techniques to relate long-term synaptic modifications in fear circuits induced by fear conditioning to memories of aversive experiences. Bolshakov's work has illuminated how specific afferent input activity is encoded and preserved during fear learning, identifying mechanisms of pathway specificity that maintain functional independence of convergent inputs and contribute to the directionality of information flow in fear conditioning circuits. His research also demonstrates that synaptic modifications and fear memory formation are regulated by neural circuitry-specific gene expression, providing cellular evidence for plasticity in conditioned stimulus pathways as a mechanism of fear memory formation. More recently, his lab has explored how anxiety-related behaviors are mediated through interactions between brain regions such as the amygdala and BNST, uncovering network-level mechanisms that control anxiogenesis by modulating the activity of BNST neurons to downstream regions.

Research topics

• Neuroscience
• Medicine
• Biology
• Internal medicine
• Endocrinology
• Psychiatry
• Clinical psychology
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Post-traumatic stress disorder: clinical and translational neuroscience from cells to circuits

  Nature Reviews Neurology · 2022 · 432 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Maternal and early postnatal immune activation produce sex-specific effects on autism-like behaviors and neuroimmune function in mice

  Scientific Reports · 2019-11-15 · 143 citations

  articleOpen access

  Increasing evidence suggests a role for inflammation in neuropsychiatric conditions including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental syndrome with higher prevalence in males than females. Here we examined the effects of early-life immune system activation (EIA)-comprising regimens of prenatal, early postnatal, or combined ("two-hit") immune activation-on the core behavioral features of ASD (decreased social interaction, increased repetitive behavior, and aberrant communication) in…

  PublisherDOI

• APP Family Regulates Neuronal Excitability and Synaptic Plasticity but Not Neuronal Survival

  Neuron · 2020 · 100 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Maternal and Early Postnatal Immune Activation Produce Dissociable Effects on Neurotransmission in mPFC–Amygdala Circuits

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2018-02-28 · 84 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Inflammatory processes may be involved in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric illnesses including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Evidence from studies in rodents indicates that immune activation during early development can produce core features of ASD (social interaction deficits, dysregulation of communication, increases in stereotyped behaviors, and anxiety), although the neural mechanisms of these effects are not thoroughly understood. We treated timed-pregnant mice with polyinosinic:po…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mechanisms of fear learning and extinction: synaptic plasticity–fear memory connection

  Psychopharmacology · 2018-11-10 · 74 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• PACAP-mediated modulation of amygdalar-BNST interactions: implications for control of anxiety states

  NIH · $446k · 2016–2019

• NIH Grant R01NS045625

  NIH · $1.2M · 2009

• TRPC-mediated control of anxiety

  NIH · $2.3M · 2015–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Tsvetkov Ea

  Medical University of South Carolina

  73 shared

• Yan Li

  72 shared

• William A. Carlezon

  McLean Hospital

  49 shared

• Edward G. Meloni

  Harvard University

  33 shared

• Kwang‐Soo Kim

  28 shared

• Uwe Rudolph

  McLean Hospital

  26 shared

• Jun-Hyeong Cho

  University of California, Riverside

  24 shared

• Steven A. Siegelbaum

  24 shared

Labs

• Cellular Neurobiology LaboratoryPI

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Charles Czeislerh-187
• Constance L. Cepkoh-149
• Xandra Breakefieldh-141