Our Work

Our scientific inquiry is guided by two overarching questions:

How does an individual choose between satiating hunger versus fulfilling other need states?
How do perturbations during critical periods of development influence neural circuit formation and lead to lasting health consequences?

As the lab is in its initial stages, specific projects are currently forming. The techniques described below will serve as essential tools for all of our projects.

Tissue Clearing

We use tissue clearing to render whole organs transparent by removing light-scattering elements while preserving the tissue's structural integrity and molecular information. This allows us to visualize intact neural circuits to gain a brain-wide understanding of complex motivated behaviors.

Whole Brain Registration and Analysis

While it is important to visualize neural circuits in intact brains, it is also useful to be able to quantify this data. Aligning whole brains to the Allen Brain Atlas Common Coordinate Framework and using machine learning to quantify how many neurons of interest are present in each brain region allows us to compare brain-wide expression between experimental groups (male vs. female, normal chow diet vs. high fat diet, etc.).

Circuit Tracing

We use both anterograde and retrograde neural tracing techniques to interpret brain connectivity and function.

FISH and IHC

Fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) is used to visualize and quantify mRNA abundance in brain regions of interest, whereas immunohistochemistry is used to visualize and quantify protein.

Imaging

Imaging, whether it be with a lightsheet, confocal, brightfield or fluorescent microscope, is one of the main techniques that The Bedenbaugh Lab employs.

Pharmacology and Chemogenetics

To reveal how inhibiting or stimulating specific substrates modulates physiology and behavior, we utilize pharmacological and chemogenetic tools.

Biosensors and In Vivo Imaging

Biosensors and in vivo imaging using fiber photometry allows us to time-lock photometry signals to behaviors.

Physiology and Behavior

We combine neural activity monitoring and manipulations with a multitude of behavioral assays to define how specific brain circuits drive behavior.