PhD student Harvard @EngertLab, @HHMIJanelia Ahrens lab; searching for the molecular, cellular, and circuit underpinnings of behavior | 🏊🏼♂️🚴🏼🏃🏻 | he/him
Boston, MA
Joined August 2017
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Excited to share that the astrocyte-centered half of my thesis work is now out @ScienceMagazine! With @MishaAhrens @marcduque3
science.org/doi/10.1126/scie… 1/8
Alex Chen retweeted
Really happy to share the last of my postdoc work in @Nature! Along with co-first author Junsung Woo, we identified functionally distinct astrocyte subpopulations in vivo!
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Alex Chen retweeted
Dendritic computation for cognitive flexibility
Our new paper in Science identifies rule-belief signals in the distal apical dendrites of cortical pyramidal neurons. These signals integrate with somatic sensory signals to support flexible decisions.
science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…
Alex Chen retweeted
Grateful for two R01s recently: to develop tools for recording and perturbing biochemical dynamics in the brain (with @jinzhanglab), and to uncover what these dynamics do in vivo. Recruiting postdocs, grad students, and engineers to join our exploration. sites.wustl.edu/yaochenlab/p…
Alex Chen retweeted
Excited to officially share my PhD work!
Grateful for the amazing team @GeoffMeyerhof @JimjohnMilan @juliadoingneuro @lovett_barron whose collective effort made this possible 🐟🐠🐡
Alex Chen retweeted
I’m thrilled to share the published version of our paper, now officially out in Neuron! Read it here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1no8J…
One updated highlight: with new analyses we now show how functionally-defined groups of neurons putatively overlap with molecular cell types in LPBN
I’m so excited to share our preprint on how brainstem neurons sense and integrate multiple body signals during food consumption. We imaged 1000s of neurons across the lateral parabrachial nucleus (LPBN) in behaving mice. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
Alex Chen retweeted
In a moment of defeat, the brain undergoes a sudden shift. The neuroscientist Misha Ahrens (left) and his student Alex Chen showed that cells called astrocytes help to shift the brain state from hope to hopelessness. quantamagazine.org/once-thou…
Alex Chen retweeted
Peter Kalugin's paper on optical tracking of up to ten neuromodulators simultaneously is out in Neuron with some cool new results, including quantitative demixing of norepinephrine and dopamine concentrations. Please check it out and retweet!
MORSE is out now in Neuron, with an expanded dataset: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
Using crosstalk to our advantage, we demixed norepinephrine & dopamine's binding at each other’s sensors to simultaneously quantify their release from locus coeruleus with resolution in the tens of nM.
So cool! One of the most interesting questions about neuromodulation rn
Excited to share the first work from my postdoc in the von Zastrow lab! We address a fundamental question about neuromodulator signaling: Can neurons tell the difference between multiple neuromodulatory inputs when they converge on few GPCR pathways? biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…
Alex Chen retweeted
1/12
Excited to share our new Nature paper:
“A thalamus–brainstem attractor network drives history-biased decisions”
How does the brain use recent experience to guide the next decision?
#Neuroscience #Zebrafish #DecisionMaking
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
Alex Chen retweeted
Thrilled to share that I’ll be starting my lab in the Kresge Hearing Research Institute @UMichOto in May!
We study how the brain turns gravity signals into stable movement → zhulab.fish (yup, proudly a #zebrafish lab🐟)
If you're interested, get in touch! #newPI
Alex Chen retweeted
In a moment of defeat, the brain undergoes a sudden shift. The neuroscientist Misha Ahrens (left) and his student Alex Chen showed that cells called astrocytes help to shift the brain state from hope to hopelessness. quantamagazine.org/once-thou…
Check out this article in @QuantaMagazine about how astrocytes influence neural activity, including our work from last year! quantamagazine.org/once-thou…
Alex Chen retweeted
Wendy Valencia-Montoya and team uncover thermal infrared as one of the most ancient pollination signals uniting plants and animals. From the field to single proteins. @wendyssae
Long before flowers dazzled pollinators with brilliant colors and sweet scents, ancient plants used another feature to signal insects: heat. The findings in Science offer new insights into what shaped the earliest eras of plant-animal coevolution.
Learn more in this week's issue: scim.ag/4iVZtfM
ALT Cycad plants use thermogenesis to warm their reproductive cones. A beetle dusted with pollen and fluorescent dyes lands on the warm cone of a cycad. High concentrations of dye have been deposited on the cone’s hottest regions during previous visits by other labeled beetles. Beetle pollinators use these thermal infrared patterns as a guide to locate host pollen and ovulate cones.
Very cool work!
Just out! “The astrocytic ensemble acts as a multiday trace to stabilize memory.” We identified astrocytic ensembles that link experiences across days to stabilize memory nature.com/articles/s41586-0…. New astrocyte tools are openly available at Addgene: addgene.org/Jun_Nagai/. 1/8
Alex Chen retweeted
Octopuses sense environmental microbiomes to drive predatory and parental behaviors. Artwork by Lily Soucy. #evolution #sensation #microbiome @CellPressNews
Check out this great article from @_TheTransmitter on our recent paper and related work! thetransmitter.org/astrocyte…
Alex Chen retweeted
@CoreyAHAllard et al asks how “solar-powered” slugs maintain stolen chloroplasts from their diet for photosynthesis and starvation resistance. @CellPressNews, @MCB_Harvard, @harvardmed
cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092…
Alex Chen retweeted
Please help us welcome the 2025 Grass Fellows! The Grass Fellowship program brings early-career investigators to the MBL to pursue a self-designed, independent research project in neuroscience.
Learn more here: bit.ly/3H57boR
📷 Credit: Scott Bennett
ALT Chain cat shark at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. Credit: Scott Bennett
Alex Chen retweeted
🧠 Curious about neuromodulator interactions or how sleep works its magic? Apply to our lab @WashUMedNeuro as a postdoc to bridge cellular & systems neuroscience by decoding biochemical signaling dynamics in the brain! Please RT. #Neuroscience #PostdocOpportunity #BrainResearch
🚨Job Alert 🚨
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Chen Lab)
@yaochen20’s interdisciplinary lab in the Department of Neuroscience at WashU Medicine seeks a motivated postdoctoral researcher to join the team.
Learn more and apply: neuroscience.wustl.edu/items…
ALT Graphic includes image of Neuroscience Research Building with downtown St. Louis in the background. Graphic reads: Join our team. Postdoctoral Research Associate (Chen Lab)
Alex Chen retweeted
Excited to share our Science paper on HaloDA1.0-the first genetically encoded far-red dopamine sensor! 🥳It enables powerful multiplex imaging in neurons, brain slices, and live animals.🧠🔬 #GRABsensors #Dopamine
science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…
