Brain Circuits and Neuron-glia Adaptations

The Brain Circuits and Neuron-Glia Adaptations (C2B) team studies the mechanisms underlying mood, cognition, and motivation in physiological and pathological contexts. Using state-of-the-art technological platforms, our team combines basic, translational, and clinical research via an academia-industry productive partnership.
Our team develops studies from molecules to cells (neurons, glia), to circuits (anatomic and functional), to behavior (normal and maladaptive), in order to understand the basis of mood, cognition, and motivation. The fundamental neuroscience studies developed by our team set the basis to better understand the pathophysiological mechanisms of neurological/neuropsychiatric disorders such as addiction, depression and Alzheimer’s disease, in both preclinical models and humans.

In parallel, our clinical research studies explore novel neuroimaging and molecular biomarkers and therapeutic approaches in Major Depression and Treatment Resistant Depression with observational neuroimaging studies in clinical populations and clinical trials with new antidepressant molecules while our recent translational work focuses on the biomarker potential of exosomes.
This bidirectional scientific pipeline between fundamental and clinical neuroscience constitutes the key element that will enable this team to achieve the ambitious objectives of translating our ground-breaking scientific results about the cellular and circuit brain machinery to the clinical context, developing innovative therapeutic strategies to be tested in real-world clinical populations and create value and intellectual property in partnership with strategic partners in the industry.

Scientific excellence, Clinical impact, Innovation, Outreach activities for the society

PhD Student

Sara Barsanti

PhD Student

Tiago Silveira-Rosa

PhD Student

Ana Vale

MSc Student

Anabela Ferreira

MSc Student

Beatriz Barros dos Santos

Team Members

Projects

João Bessa

A multimodal translational approach to explore the role of neuroplasticity in depression and antidepressant treatment: from the bench to the bedside

Depression is a highly prevalent mood disorder that inflicts a heavy burden in depressed patients and a significant social and economic impact worldwide…

Bárbara Coimbra

Brainstem orchestration of cue-reward associations

The brain constantly integrates new sensory information, and associates environmental cues to outcomes, adjusting behavior to maximize reward and minimize unpleasant consequences. This process is critical for survival, and its dysregulation is a hallmark of…

Ioannis Sotiropoulos

Chronic Stress as the connecting parameter between stress-related depression & Alzheimer’s disease

Although cumulative evidence suggests a continuum between depression and AD, and stress is suggested to play a detrimental role in both diseases…

João Oliveira

Decoding the neuron-astrocyte dialogue that supports cognitive processing

Cognitive functioning is the intellectual activity that includes mental processes, such as, attention, learning and memory, executive function, verbal fluency, and working memory…

Neide Vieira

Exploring SNXs Role in the nervous system: implications for pathology

Our research main focus over the past years has been to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying proteostasis regulation and their relevance for physiological and pathological processes…

Ana João Rodrigues

Impact of prenatal stress in the brain: from rodents to humans

Early life adversity can have long lasting consequences for the individual, increasing the vulnerability to develop neuropsychiatric disorders later in life…

Luisa Pinto

Modeling and assessing the neurobiological mechanisms of major depressive disorder using preclinical animal models and IPSCs from patients

Depression affects around 16% of the world population and is the leading cause of disability worldwide. This means that around 300 million people are now living with depression…

Luisa Pinto

Modulation of adult brain cytogenesis for treatment of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases

The adult mammalian brain harbors different forms of neural plasticity, ranging from neuronal synapto-dendritic rearrangements to the generation of new neuronal…

João Oliveira

Neuron-astrocyte signaling in depression: learning from astrocytes how to effectively treat depression

Depressive disorders affect more than 280 million people worldwide and its pathophysiology is still poorly understood. Depressive behavior is characterized in humans…

Ana João Rodrigues

Neuronal circuits of reward and aversion

Since the moment we wake up, we are continuously flooded with sensory information of variable relevance. Therefore, our brains evolved to filter information…

Carina Soares-Cunha

Sensory signals of associative learning

Through evolution, animals gained the remarkable ability to respond with sub second precision to environmental stimuli and to learn to associate those with positive or negative outcomes…

Ioannis Sotiropoulos

Understanding the role of chronic stress as a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia, affects nearly 44 million people worldwide and costs over $600 billion/year (1% of the world’s GDP)…

João Bessa

Unravelling the neural correlates of suicide and the effects of antidepressants in major depression

Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide with a great personal, social, and economic impact. It is the most common disorder at the time of death by suicide, which is a major public health concern…

Ioannis Sotiropoulos

Unrevealing the multifacial role of Tau protein in the adult brain homeostasis beyond Alzheimer’s disease

While Tau protein is originally described as a mainly axonal, microtubule-associated protein, accumulating evidence supports the multiple roles of Tau in different cell…

Success Story

Fundamental Neuroscience: Our team was awarded with an ERC Consolidator grant to investigate how valence is encoded in our brain and how this information leads to rewarding and aversive outcomes;

Clinical Research: We have currently running one Phase 1 Clinical Trial “A Randomised, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Crossover EEG Study to Investigate the effect of GT-002 in Healthy Subjects” in 2CA-Braga – Industry Promoter: Gabather;

Entrepreneurship: We created one start-up company BNML – Behavioral & Molecular Lab, Lda, which uses advanced analytical methods to assess the therapeutic potential of new compounds at the behavioral, cellular, and molecular level, using animal models that mimic the symptoms of human disease.

Selected Research Outputs

Mateus-Pinheiro, A., Patrício, P., Alves, N.D., Martins-Macedo, J., Caetano, I., Silveira-Rosa, T., Araújo, B., Mateus-Pinheiro, M., Silva-Correia, J., Sardinha, V.M., Loureiro-Campos, E., Rodrigues, A.J., Oliveira, J.F., Bessa, J.M., Sousa, N., Pinto, L.* (2021). Hippocampal cytogenesis abrogation impairs inter-regional communication between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex and promotes the time-dependent manifestation of emotional and cognitive deﬁcits. Molecular Psychiatry, Sep 14. doi: 10.1038/s41380-021-01287-8