Lab Introduction & Major Research Interests
My lab studies how neurons in the nervous system respond to sound. Specifically, we are interested in neurons in the mammalian auditory brainstem, which forms the first station in the central ascending auditory pathway. How do they use their cellular and circuit properties to encode temporal and spectral sound features, and how are they regulated by various mechanisms such as neuromodulation or top-down regulation? For example, why do octopus cells, once thought to be an ideal coincidence detector, respond to fast frequency chirps with direction selectivity? We use a variety of approaches, including in vivo single-cell electrophysiological recordings with patch clamp / sharp microelectrodes, in vivo single-cell electroporation, viral tracing, chemo- and optogenetics, in vitro brain slice recordings, to answer these questions.
Recent Representative Publication ( * corresponding author)
1. Lu HW, Smith PH, Joris PX. (2022) “Mammalian octopus cells are direction selective to frequency sweeps by excitatory synaptic sequence detection.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119:e2203748119.
2. Lu HW, Joris PX. (2022) “In Vivo Whole-Cell Recording in the Gerbil Cochlear Nucleus.” Developmental, Physiological, and Functional Neurobiology of the Inner Ear, A.K. Groves, ed. (New York, NY: Springer US), pp. 305–320.
3. Lu HW, Smith PH, Joris PX. (2018) “Submillisecond Monaural Coincidence Detection by Octopus Cells.” Acta Acustica united with Acustica. 104(5):852–5.
4. Lu HW, Balmer TS, Romero GB, Trussell LO. (2017) “Slow AMPAR synaptic transmission is determined by stargazin and glutamate transporters.” Neuron. 96(1):73-80.