University of Hong Kong

Prof. Cora Sau Wan Lai

Prof. Lai is the Associate Director of Teaching and Learning at Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, HKU. Her key research interest is in how memory affects behaviour, ranging from synaptic plasticity with learning and memory, the role of sleep in emotional learning, fear conditioning and extinction, amongst other topics. Combining both a top-down approach with learning behaviour experiments and a bottom-down approach with investigating neural circuits, Prof. Lai’s lab utilises a wide range of imagining, optogenetics and behavioural tools, and aims to improve therapeutic intervention for psychotic disorders

Affiliation: Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, HKU

Email: coraswl@hku.hk

Research Interest:

The true nature of memory and its mechanisms has long been a mystery in neuroscience. The process of learning and memory: analysing information, processing and storing said information, and modifying behaviour with it contains many question marks to this date. Prof. Lai’s lab specialises in investigating synaptic plasticity of the central nervous system in mice, especially the fear associative learning process that proves ideal for examination on behavioural, circuitry and molecular levels, and different psychiatric disease animal models with dendritic spine pathology

Methodology:

Research on memory and neural plasticity have largely been split as either from a top-down approach, using learning behaviour experiments to investigate how the introduced information affect behaviour; or from a bottom-up approach that investigates neural circuits through their firing patterns and synaptic transmission. Prof. Lai’s lab combines both, utilising a range of tools like in vivo imaging, optogenetics, chemogenetics, genetic manipulations, and behavioural approaches on mice models.

Key Questions:

  1. How are different information and environmental stimulus differentiated?

  2. How does neural circuits integrate convergence signals during learning?

  3. What role does sleeping play in (emotional) learning?

Quote from the PI:

“Placeholder Quote”