Alex Kwan received a Ph.D. in applied physics from Cornell University, where he worked on nonlinear optical microscopy in the laboratory of Watt Webb. For postdoctoral studies, he was a Croucher Fellow studying cortical microcircuits with Yang Dan at the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the Cornell faculty in 2022, Dr. Kwan was an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.
The Kwan lab applies systems neuroscience and neuroengineering approaches to the study of mental health. We develop optical imaging techniques to visualize neural dynamics in awake mice. We design quantitative decision-making paradigms to characterize behavior. We often complement the imaging and behavioral experiments with other molecular, electrophysiological, optogenetic, and computational methods.
Current effort in the lab is directed towards two topics: (1) Drug action in the brain: Psychiatric drugs exert powerful effects in humans characterized by altered perception, cognition, and mood. The lab studies the action of psychoactive drugs, including ketamine and serotonergic psychedelics such as psilocybin, on the function and connectivity of neurons in the frontal cortex. (2) Decision-making: Animals use past choice and reward history to guide their current decisions. We are interested in how neural circuits may implement reinforcement learning, and whether reward learning dysfunctions may be a useful metric to quantify neuropsychiatric conditions.
To learn more about the lab, please visit the Kwan Lab website.
Shao LX, Liao C, Gregg I, Davoudian PA, Savalia NK, Delagarza K, and Kwan AC. Psilocybin induces rapid and persistent growth of dendritic spines in frontal cortex in vivo. Neuron (2021).
Savalia NK, Shao LX, and Kwan AC. A dendrite-focused framework for understanding the actions of ketamine and psychedelics. Trends in Neurosciences (2021).
Ali F, Gerhard DM, Sweasy K, Pothula S, Pittenger C, Duman RS, and Kwan AC. Ketamine disinhibits dendrites and enhances calcium signals in prefrontal dendritic spines. Nature Communications (2020).
Ali F, and Kwan AC. Interpreting in vivo calcium signals from neuronal cell bodies, axons, and dendrites: a review. Neurophotonics (2020).
Barthas F, and Kwan AC. Secondary motor cortex: where ‘sensory’ meets ‘motor’ in the rodent frontal cortex. Trends in Neurosciences (2017).
Siniscalchi MJ, Phoumthipphavong V, Ali F, Lozano M, and Kwan AC. Fast and slow transitions in frontal ensemble activity during flexible sensorimotor behavior. Nature Neuroscience (2016).
B.A.Sc. (Engineering Physics), Simon Fraser University, 2003
Ph.D. (Applied Physics), Cornell University, 2009
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