Hernando M. Vergara joins the BCB Lab as a Ramon y Cajal fellow

Hernando M. Vergara, a recently awarded Ramón y Cajal fellow, will join the Brain Circuits and Behavior lab in May 2024. These are very exciting news for everyone and we are looking forward to have him here.
Hernando did his PhD in the EMBL studying the evolution of the nervous system, where he studied the marine annelid Platynereis. He developed a gene expression atlas to reveal the molecular profiles of all the cells inside the body of this animal, integrating it with single cell RNA sequencing data, and with a whole-body ultrastructural map. This revealed deep evolutionary relationships between the neurons of animals, and generated tools for the multimodal characterisation of neurons.

During his postdoc in the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for neural circuits and behavior, he studied the striatal circuits in mice that control the learning of auditory associations, and the mechanisms by which dopamine shapes their plasticity.

His research will focus on the study of the midbrain and hindbrain circuits by which the basal ganglia control behavior in mice. For that he will use auditory and olfactory tasks, viral strategies for circuit tracing, single cell transcriptomics to characterise neurons, optogenetics to assess the role of specific circuits, and electrophysiology to assess the mechanisms by which neuronal activity gives rise to specific behaviors. A better understanding of these circuits will allow the design of therapies to counteract the effects of diseases such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s, something he is keen on doing through collaborations in IDIBAPS.