Michael S. Fanselow, Ph.D. - Biographical Sketch
Professor, UCLA Department of Psychology Area Chair, Learning and Behavior
Associate Member, Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior

Research Interests

Dr Fanselow's laboratory uses rat and mouse models employing anatomical, pharmacological and genetic alterations to understand the neurobiology of basic motivational, emotional and learning systems. He is particularly interested in fear and anxiety and how it interacts with pain and illness –induced recuperative behavior. Fear is a coordinated system involving the amygdala and periaqueductal gray that is organized to protect against environmental threats. When it is activated itengages opioid mediated analgesic systems to inhibit recuperative behavior. Cytokine activation engages recuperative behavior that while beneficial to recovery, can interfere with overt defenses. The balance between these systems is controlled by glutamatergic, GABAergic and opioidergic neurotransmission in specific neural circuits.

Recent publications

Bryant CD, Roberts KW, Byun JS, Fanselow MS, Evans CJ.        
Morphine analgesic tolerance in 129P3/J and 129S6/SvEv mice. h Pharmacol Bioc em Behav. 2006 Dec;85(4):769-79. Epub 2006 Dec 28.
         
Ponnusamy R, Poulos AM, Fanselow MS.
Amygdala-dependent and amygdala-independent pathways for contextual fear conditioning. Neuroscience. 2007 Jul 29;147(4):919-27. Epub 2007 Jun 22.

McHugh TJ, Jones MW, Quinn JJ, Balthasar N, Coppari R, Elmquist JK, Lowell BB, Fanselow MS, Wilson MA, Tonegawa S.
Dentate gyrus NMDA receptors mediate rapid pattern separation in the hippocampal network. Science. 2007 Jul 6;317(5834):94-9. Epub 2007 Jun 7.

de Oca BM, Minor TR, Fanselow MS.
Brief flight to a familiar enclosure in response to a conditional stimulus in rats. J Gen Psychol. 2007 Apr;134(2):153-72.

Gonzalez F, Quinn JJ, Fanselow MS.
Differential effects of adding and removing components of a context on the generalization of conditional freezing. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2003 Jan;29(1):78-83.


Blaeser F, Sanders MJ, Truong N, Ko S, Wu LJ, Wozniak DF, Fanselow MS, Zhuo M, Chatila TA.  
Long-term memory deficits in Pavlovian fear conditioning in Ca2+/calmodulin kinase kinase alpha-deficient mice. Mol Cell Biol. 2006 Dec;26(23):9105-15. Epub 2006 Oct 2.

Landeira-Fernandez J, DeCola JP, Kim JJ, Fanselow MS.
Immediate shock deficit in fear conditioning: effects of shock manipulations. Behav Neurosci. 2006 Aug;120(4):873-9.

Wiltgen BJ, Sanders MJ, Anagnostaras SG, Sage JR, Fanselow MS.
Context fear learning in the absence of the hippocampus. J Neurosci. 2006 May 17;26(20):5484-91.

Bryant CD, Eitan S, Sinchak K, Fanselow MS, Evans CJ.
NMDA receptor antagonism disrupts the development of morphine analgesic tolerance in male, but not female  C57BL/6J mice. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2006 Aug;291(2):R315-26. Epub 2006 Apr 6.

Michael S. Fanselow, Ph.D.
UCLA Learning and Memory Project
Department of Psychology
Box 951563
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563
On-campus mail: 8548 Franz Hall 156304
Tel: (310) 206-3891
Fax: (310) 206-5895
E-mail: fanselow@ucla.edu
Web: www.psych.ucla.edu/fanselowlab