Howe Lab

Anil joined the Howe lab as a postdoc in the summer of 2022. Prior to coming to Boston, he was working as a research engineer at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), where he studied the nociceptive impact of dopaminergic lesions in the rat model of Parkinson’s disease. On 30th November 2021, He publicly defended a joint PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam and University of Strasbourg entitled ‘Dopaminergic control of food choice preference and tVTA influence on learned helplessness’ in the frame of ‘Neurotime’ an Erasmus mundus joint doctoral program. During his doctorate at la fleur Lab (NIN-UvA) and Barrot Lab (INCI-Unistra), he worked on a rodent model of Parkinson’s disease, with a bilateral lesion of the substantia nigra, for the presence of motor and non-motor symptoms, with the latter covering aspects related to food intake, pain, and depression. At first, he showed that a co-lesion of the tail of the ventral tegmental area (tVTA) is sufficient to reverse these parkinsonian-like symptoms. Next, he studied the influence of the dopaminergic system on food choice by selectively destroying dopamine neurons and their terminals and testing the animals with a free-choice high-fat high-sugar diet. He reported an increase in fat intake with the loss of dopaminergic transmission, or the blockade of D1 receptors, in the rostral part of the lateral nucleus accumbens. Finally, he also showed an increased excitatory synaptic transmission in the tVTA associated with the development of learned helplessness in rats. Here in the Howe lab, Anil uses optical method like 2-photon imaging and fiber photometry to study the spatial and temporal changes in dopaminergic signaling in alpha-synuclein mice. Outside the lab, Anil has twin daughters who turned one this summer and loves to spend time with them.

ORCID