Manoela V. Fogaca, Ph.D.

Research in the Fogaça lab focuses on understanding the molecular basis of behaviors relevant to stress and the actions of fast antidepressant and anxiolytic drugs, aiming to identify specific circuits, neuronal subpopulations and synaptic mechanisms involved in these responses. Because currently available antidepressants have serious limitations for treating Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), including low response rates, a significant number of treatment resistant patients, and a time-lag before there is a therapeutic response, the lab is interested in exploring new pharmacological strategies to treat MDD, including compounds that target the glutamatergic and/or the GABAergic systems in the brain, such as ketamine, ketamine-like drugs and GABA receptor modulators. To this goal, we combine molecular neuropharmacology, genetic approaches and circuit-level studies of neurobiological systems to investigate how specific subpopulations of GABAergic (notably somatostatin and parvalbumin interneurons) and glutamatergic neurons crosstalk to modulate excitation and inhibition network dynamics that lead to phenotypes relevant to stress disorders and to the actions of fast antidepressants.