Gonçalves Lab Website: https://goncalveslab.org

Our lab studies the circuit physiology of the hippocampus, and specifically how environment, aging and inflammation can modulate memory and learning. We use state-of-the-art in vivo two-photon Ca²⁺ imaging techniques in awake mice and we were pioneers in applying these imaging methodologies to the study of adult neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus (Gonçalves et al. 2016a). 

The DG is one of the few regions of the mammalian brain that keeps adding new neurons through adulthood in what probably constitutes the most robust form of neuronal plasticity in the adult brain. Adult-born neurons contribute to memory formation and defects in neurogenesis have been associated with several human neurological and psychiatric diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. In addition adult-born neurons have also been used to study neuronal development.

We are particularly interested in understanding how adult neurogenesis in the DG may support hippocampal function, playing a role in memory and learning. In order to understand the function of adult-born neurons in the circuits underlying spatial memory we are studying the encoding of position in the hippocampus, including ‘place cells’ i.e. neurons that fire primarily when an animal is at a specific location.

We have previously found that adult neurogenesis improves the precision of neural representations of space in young mice (Frechou et al. 2022), when the mice are placed in a novel context. We also found that these representations, encoding for the position of the mouse within its surroundings, become less precise as animals age (McDermott et al. 2023). Our current work is building on these initial findings to identify the molecular and cellular pathways that mediate the effects of environment on spatial memory and cognition.

Current directions

We are currently investigating the role of microglia and neuro-immune pathways in the formation of memories and neural representations of space in the hippocampus. Additionally we are interested in identifying the molecular determinants of spatial encoding by obtaining transcriptional profiles of previously imaged neurons, thus establishing a link between the molecular and neural encoding properties of individual cells.

Frechou M.A., Martin S.S., McDermott K.D., Huaman E.A., Gokhan S., Tomé W.A., Coen-Cagli R., Gonçalves J.T., Adult neurogenesis improves spatial information encoding in the dentate gyrus, Nat Commun., 15(1):6410 (2024)

McDermott K.D., Frechou M.A., Martin S.S., Jordan J.T., Gonçalves J.T., Delayed formation of neural representations of space in aged mice, Aging Cell, e13924 (2023)

Jordan J.T., McDermott K.D., Frechou M.A., Shtrahman M.,Gonçalves J. T., Treadmill-based task for assessing spatial memory in head-fixed mice, STAR Protoc., 2, 100770 (2021) 

Guo N., McDermott K.D., Shih Y.T., Zanga H., Ghosh D., Gonçalves J.T., Sahay A., Transcriptional regulation of neural stem cell expansion in the adult hippocampus, eLife, 11:e72195 (2022) PMCID: PMC8820733

Nasrallah K., Frechou M.A., Yoon Y.J., Persaud S., Gonçalves J.T., Castillo P.E., Seizure-induced strengthening of a recurrent excitatory circuit in the dentate gyrus is proconvulsant, PNAS 119(32):e2201151119 (2022)

Gronska-Peski M., Gonçalves J.T., Hébert J.M., Enriched Environment Promotes Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis through FGFRs. J. Neurosci.;41(13), 2899-2910 (2021) 

Mansour A.A., Gonçalves J.T., Bloyd C., Li H., Fernandes S., Quang D., Johnston S., Parylak S., Jin X., Gage F.H., An in vivo model of functional and vascularized human brain organoids, Nature Biotech., 36(5), 432-441 (2018)

Gonçalves J. T. *, Schafer S.T. * (equal contribution), Gage F.H., Adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus: from stem cells to behavior, Cell, 167, 897-914 (2016)

Gonçalves J.T., Bloyd C.W., Shtrahman M, Johnston S.T., Schafer S.T., Parylak S.L., Thanh T., Chang T., Gage F.H., In vivo imaging of dendritic pruning in dentate granule cells, Nat. Neurosci., 19(6), 788-791 (2016)