Toshifumi Tomoda

Dr. Tomoda’s primary research question is how affective and cognitive processes are regulated to shape our mind and behaviour in health and brain disorders. The lab particularly focuses on cellular and molecular mechanisms for the maintenance of functional homeostasis of cortical circuits underlying normal neurotransmission and neuroplasticity. More specifically, the team studies how disrupted homeostasis of cortical circuits (through, for example, attenuated autophagy, elevated ER stress, disrupted proteostasis, mitochondrial oxidative stress, neuroinflammatory changes) may manifest as maladaptive circuit changes, such as excitatory/inhibitory imbalance, leading to affect and cognitive disturbances commonly observed across neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions, using expertise in cell type-specific circuit manipulation coupled with functional analysis tools in preclinical rodent models.