Dr. Roberto Vincis
Assistant Professor in Biology and Neuroscience
- Faculty
- Biological Science
- BRF 211
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rvincis@neuro.fsu.edu
- Interest
- The research in the lab aims to investigate the basis of our ability to decide and plan our eating behaviors and dietary choices. The motivation to eat depends greatly on the taste of food and the reward experienced while eating. How are we able to extract taste information from what we eat? How do we use taste information to decide what to eat? Specifically, how does the brain allow this to happen? What are the specific regions and connections of the brain that are fundamental to this process? By understanding these points, we will gather critical knowledge on how the brain controls food consumption and feeding behaviors, both of which are relevant for understanding eating disorders. Our lab addresses these points by studying the neural circuits and computations of brain regions involved in taste and reward processing, such as the gustatory portion of the Insular Cortex and other subcortical areas.
- Current Research
- Current projects in the lab involve the following: understanding how cortical (gustatory cortex; GC) and thalamic (gustatory thalamus and limbic thalami) areas encode sensory information when animals are actively experiencing taste stimuli; investigating how a higher order limbic thalamic nucleus, the mediodorsal thalamus (MD), affects the neural properties of GC and shapes taste-related behaviors; unveiling the role of GC and its cortical and subcortical connections in perceptual and preferential taste-oriented decision making. To achieve these goals, we rely on novel and sophisticated experimental techniques, including behavioral training, anatomical and genetic targeting of specific neural populations, optical and electrophysiological recordings of neural activity in alert animals, and opto- and chemogenetic manipulation of brain activity.
- Recent Publications
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Bouaichi CG, Vincis R (2020). Cortical processing of chemosensory and hedonic features of taste in active licking mice. Neurophysiol, 123(5):1995-2009. PubMed Shakeshaft M, Vincis R (2020). Bad food memories? It is just a matter of time. J Physiol, 598(23):5303-5304. PubMed Vincis R, Chen K, Czarnecki L, Chen J, Fontanini A (2020). Dynamic Representation of Taste-Related Decisions in the Gustatory Insular Cortex of Mice. Curr Biol, 30(10):1834-1844. PubMed Bhattacharjee AS, Konakamchi S, Turaev D, Vincis R, Nunes D, Dingankar AA, Spors H, Carleton A, Kuner T, Abraham NM (2019). Similarity and Strength of Glomerular Odor Representations Define a Neural Metric of Sniff-Invariant Discrimination Time. Cell Rep, 28(11):2966-2978. PubMed Chen K, Vincis R, Fontanini A (2019). Disruption of Cortical Dopaminergic Modulation Impairs Preparatory Activity and Delays Licking Initiation. Cereb Cortex, 29(4):1802-1815. PubMed Vincis R, Fontanini A (2019). Central taste anatomy and physiology. Handb Clin Neurol, 187-204. PubMed Gschwend O, Beroud J, Vincis R, Rodriguez I, Carleton A (2016). Dense encoding of natural odorants by ensembles of sparsely activated neurons in the olfactory bulb. Sci Rep, 36514. PubMed Vincis R, Fontanini A (2016). Associative learning changes cross-modal representations in the gustatory cortex. Elife, 5. PubMed Vincis R, Fontanini A (2016). A gustocentric perspective to understanding primary sensory cortices. Curr Opin Neurobiol, 118-124. PubMed
Lab Website
Training Grant Opportunities
Neuro Grads and Postdocs
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Cecilia Bouaichi, Graduate Student |
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Mariela Marques, Graduate Student |
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Morgan Shakeshaft, Graduate Student |