Research & Approaches
The primary focus of the lab is to investigate the phenotypic and neurobiological changes that occur in adulthood due to adolescent alcohol use and the underlying factors contributing to these changes. A key area of interest is how adolescent alcohol consumption may exacerbate negative outcomes in adulthood, such as pain and stress.
To do this, the Wills lab utilizes a rodent model of binge alcohol consumption to examine the neurocircuitry that mediates these negative outcomes and the molecular mechanisms behind them. Through this research, Dr. Wills and her team aim to deepen our understanding of these changes associated with adolescent alcohol use and help advance the field of neuroscience by investigating the role of the neural pathways involved.
Listed below are some of the equipment and techniques we use in our lab.
Whole Cell Patch Clamp
We utilize whole cell patch clamp to investigate the properties and contributions of particular ion channels within a neuronal membrane. This powerful technique can be utilized to characterize changes in a specific population of neurons by analyzing membrane and ion channel characteristics in a single cell. Combining this methodology with optogenetic/chemogenetic approaches allows us to further manipulate properties of the cell membrane in real time to obtain greater understanding of the mechanisms behind our observations.
Stereotaxic Surgery
Surgical methods allow us to make specific manipulations of our desired region(s) of the brain. Through these surgical techniques we can utilize optogenetic and chemogenetic approaches to influence neuronal circuitry along with intracranial cannulas for targeted drug delivery.
RNA Scope
This microscopy-based approach utilizes fluorescent probes that recognize a specific mRNA transcript. By this approach we are able to analyze relative levels of gene expression and colocalizations of expression and activity within particular brain regions. We use this technique to investigate which neuronal populations are active after a given stimulus.
Negative Affect/Pain-Related Assessments
Our lab uses a variety of well-established approaches to obtain operationalized measurements of negative affect and to evaluate stimulus-evoked pain behaviors in our murine model. These analyses allow us to establish and characterize a particular treatment-associated phenotype that we wish to further investigate. Pictured below are the equipment we use for Hargreaves (left) and von Frey (right) assessments.
