Overview

Our lab investigates how astrocytes act as contextual regulators of neural circuits. We ask how physiological state and experience—including acute and early-life stress—reconfigure astrocyte signalling, structure, and metabolism, and how these adaptations alter circuit activity, brain states, and behaviour.

Across stress-responsive circuits, we study how astrocytes sense glucocorticoids, neuromodulators, metabolic signals, and local neuronal activity. This framework links our work on anxiety and threat, memory and behavioural adaptation, astrocyte bioenergetics, and hypothalamic control of metabolism.

We combine two-photon microscopy, electrophysiology, cellular and in vivo imaging, behavioural assays, and molecular and genetic approaches. Collaborations at the CRCHUM, Université de Montréal, and beyond help us develop and apply new tools for measuring astrocyte function in behaving animals.

Questions

How do astrocytes encode physiological context?

We investigate how stress hormones, neuromodulators, metabolic signals, and local neural activity are integrated by astrocytes to shape circuit function.

How do astrocytes regulate behavioural state?

We study how astrocyte activity contributes to threat processing, anxiety, coping, memory, and behavioural adaptation.

How does experience reconfigure astrocyte function?

We examine how acute and chronic stress, early-life experience, and sex-dependent factors reshape astrocyte signalling and their influence on neural circuits.

How do astrocytes link brain state to energetic state?

We investigate how astrocytes link synaptic and circuit activity to metabolism, from local energetic support to hypothalamic control of whole-body metabolic function.

Journal Club

See what we are reading in our monthly journal club