Henry Yin, Assistant Professor

Henry Yin

Assistant Professor
PhD Cognitive Neuroscience, UCLA, 2004
mailing address: 103 Research drive, Box 91050 Durham, NC 27708
email:
phone: 919 660 5781

research interests | research | publications

Research Summary:
 I am interested in understanding how goal-directed actions are learned, expressed, and extinguished. For the first time in history, advances in psychology and neurobiology have made it feasible to pursue the detailed neural mechanisms underlying goal-directed and voluntary actions--how they are driven by the needs and desires of the organism and controlled by cognitive processes that provide a rich representation of the self and the world. My approach to this problem is highly integrative, combining behavioral analysis with electrophysiological techniques as well as tools from molecular biology. In the near future three techniques will be emphasized. 1) Dissecting reward-guided behavior using analytical behavioral assays. Powerful tools from the 'learning theory' tradition, from the psychophysical studies of interval timing and choice in operant learning, as well as from work on behavioral economics will be used to dissect the behavior in question. 2) In vivo recording from cerebral cortex, thalamus, midbrain, and basal ganglia in awake behaving rodents. Up to hundreds of neurons can be recorded from multiple brain areas that form a functional neural network in a single animal. 3) In vitro (and ex vivo) whole-cell patch-clamp recording in brain slices, with the aid of genetic tools for visualization of distinct neuronal populations. Ultimately, I hope to characterize goal-directed actions at multiple levels of analysis--from molecules to neural networks. This knowledge will provide us with insight into various pathological conditions characterized by impaired goal-directed behaviors, such as drug addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease.

Representative Publications:   (More Publications)

  1. Yin, H. H., Ostlund, S. B., Balleine, B. W. (2008). Reward-guided learning beyond dopamine in the nucleus accumbens: the integrative functions of cortico-basal ganglia networks. European Journal of Neuroscience. (In press).
  2. Yin, H. H., Davis, M. I., Ronesi, J., & Lovinger, D. M (2006). The role of protein synthesis in striatal long-term depression. Journal of Neuroscience, 26(46), 11811-11820.
  3. Yin, H. H. & Knowlton, B. J (2006). The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7(6), 464-476.
  4. Yin, H. H. & Lovinger, D. M (2006). Frequency-specific and D2 receptor-mediated inhibition of glutamate release by retrograde endocannabinoid signaling. PNAS, 103(21), 8251-8256.
  5. Yin, H. H., Knowlton, B. J., & Balleine, B. W (2005). The role of the dorsomedial striatum in instrumental conditioning. European Journal of Neuroscience, 22, 513-523.
  6. Yin, H. H., Knowlton, B. J., & Balleine, B. W (2004). Lesions of the dorsolateral striatum abolish habits and preserve goal expectancy. European Journal of Neuroscience, 19, 1-9. (Research highlight article by Lopez, J. C.(2004). Old habits die hard. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5(2): 82.).

Lab Personnel: 
Alicia DeRusso (technician), Oksana Garver (technician), Chunxiu Yu (postdoctoral fellow)