Yiru Chen

Program: Neurosciences

Current advisor: Alexxai V. Kravitz, PhD

Undergraduate university: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2022

Enrollment year: 2022

Research summary
Examining social motivational behavior in mice and whether the behavior is influenced by food quality

I developed a novel paradigm to measure social motivation in mice housed in their homecage to capture more voluntary behavior and high-throughput data. Meanwhile, the paradigm can study the circadian rhythm of social motivation because the device can record their behavior for 24 hours for several days in their home cage. This paradigm has been evaluated with commonly used mouse strain C57/B6J and showed its sensitivity to drug manipulation. When testing the ASD mouse model Shank3 mice, the paradigm revealed not only similar results with the previous findings but also new and intriguing behavioral results. For future plans, I will do fiber recording during the behavioral tasks and test whether their social behavior will be impacted by external factors like a high-fat diet.

Graduate publications