Willuhn group

General description research

The Willuhn group is embedded in the Psychiatry Department of the Amsterdam UMC and conducts its scientific research at the NIN. The group performs a variety of cutting-edge methods for in-vivo brain recordings and manipulation in rodent models (both rats and mice) to study behaviors relevant for psychiatric disorders, with a focus on compulsive and impulsive behavior. Such in-vivo brain recordings and manipulations are carried out while rodents are tested in sophisticated, custom-designed behavioral paradigms that enable translation to human subjects. Furthermore, the team investigates the brain mechanisms of deep-brain stimulation (DBS), an innovative therapeutic approach in psychiatry, and is interested in studying the brain mechanisms of other neuromodulatory treatments (e.g., TMS, ultrasonic stimulation) used in psychiatry in the near future. Together, the long-term goal is that these approaches will identify the neural circuits underlying specific psychiatric symptoms and offer new, highly targeted pathways for therapy.

Psychiatric symptoms (or disorders) the group is interested in 

Compulsivity and impulsivity are endophenotypes that are implicated in dysfunctional behavior central to multiple psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), substance and behavioral addictions, hoarding, eating disorders, skin picking. Furthermore, the Willuhn lab is interested mechanisms through which actions become automatic (i.e., habit formation) and how the brain shapes motivation and action in response to rewarding and aversive stimuli, thereby guiding appetitive and avoidance behavior. The Willuhn group approaches its psychiatric research in rodents from different angles. On one hand, genetic manipulations of genes known to be strongly involved in psychiatric disorders are utilized to create mouse models. On the other had, behavioral conditioning is utilized to induce behaviors of interest gradually (and non-genetically) and monitor their development.

Technical approaches

The Willuhn group is focused on the neurobiology of behavior with a clear line of research focused on the behavioral function of basal-ganglia brain networks under normal (e.g., reward learning) as well as pathological (e.g., OCD) conditions, with an emphasis on the striatum and its prefrontal cortical and dopaminergic afferents. To achieve this, the group has designed and validated many behavioral paradigms for rodents and established different innovative methodologies for multi-site brain recordings as powerful and versatile readout for neurotransmitter release, single-neuron activity, and local field potentials in freely behaving animals. Currently, the lab is expanding his studies from investigating dopamine to other neuromodulators, such as serotonin, and the downstream effects of such neuromodulators on basal ganglia-cortical networks and related behavior.

Keywords: Dopamine, Serotonin, Basal ganglia, Striatum, Prefrontal cortex, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Compulsity, Impulsivity, Habit formation, Motivation, Reinforcement learning, Deep-brain stimulation (DBS), Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

List of  the matching research domains and/or disorders
Negative valence: all topics 
Positive valence: all topics
Cognitive systems: Attention and topics listed under cognitive control
Social processes: none (only in collaboration)
Arousal and regulatory systems: none
Sensorimotor systems: Habit and all topics listed under motor actions