Seungwoo Kang
Associate Professor
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Institute of Molecular Medicine
Center for Neuroimmunology and Glial Biology
Have you ever wondered why some people lose control over their drinking, and what happens in their brains when they do? Could there be more effective treatments? These questions drive our research into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying addiction and its comorbidities. Our research goals are to 1) understand how brain activity shapes reward-seeking behaviors and how disruptions in these processes drive pathological adaptations, including incentive salience, negative emotionality, and impaired decision-making, and 2) identify potential therapeutic targets and brain-wide signatures that predict the risk of related diseases.
A central focus of our work is to characterize the interaction between neurons and astrocytes, a class of glial cells whose role in brain function has been substantially redefined in recent years. Astrocytes are now recognized as active modulators of both local synaptic activity and long-range neural circuits, serving as essential partners in brain communication. To explore the neuropharmacological basis of astrocytic roles in related pathologies in a cell type-, circuit-, context-, and age-dependent manner, we apply multi-layered experimental approaches including ex vivo/in vivo electrophysiology, opto/chemogenetics, viral gene transfer, behavior-synchronized calcium and neurotransmitter imaging, spatial 3D reconstruction, and computational analysis.
Our ongoing projects include: development of compulsive alcohol drinking, neuropsychiatric consequences of alcohol withdrawal, flexibility in social and non-social reward processing, impact of adolescent experience on behavioral phenotypes in adulthood, convergent effects of aging and psychiatric disorders, and chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment.
Under the guidance of mentor faculty, students will lead independent projects leveraging multidisciplinary experimental approaches to investigate the pathogenesis of addiction and its comorbid neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Education & Training
PhD, University of California - Irvine, 2014