PEOPLE – Vsesolods Girsovics

Studying molecular biology (Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz), I developed a particular interest in the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural signaling and plasticity. For my BSc thesis, I was curious to apply molecular techniques and perform kinetic measurements to investigate physiological properties of the wildtype and a disease-related mutant of the P2X7 receptor in cell cultures.

During my Master’s in Behavior, Neurobiology and Cognition (University of Vienna), I learned how inhibitory local interneurons orchestrate information flow in Drosophila melanogaster, and I was impressed to see how two neighboring neurons respond to different parameters of a single molecule to guide Periplaneta americana towards the food source. For my MSc thesis, I examined the effects of two associative learning paradigms on hippocampal subfield volumes of human subjects using structural MRI. I also linked the data to neurophysiological animal studies to discuss them in terms of functional plasticity at the cellular level.

Subsequently, I started my PhD (University Medical Center in Mainz) and investigated the neurophysiological and -anatomical underpinnings of the tickling-evoked positive emotions by imitating social play in rats. I performed in vivo electrophysiology in the posterior insular cortex and examined neural responses during tickling across the rat brain using functional anatomy. The aim was to tackle the questions, which neural circuits provide the positive emotion of the ticklish touch, and which brain areas are particularly associated with social play.

While the PhD thesis is about to be defended, I shortly started my PostDoc at the Albrecht Lab. Besides gaining experience in teaching, I investigate the effects of stress on memory and learning in structural and functional neuroanatomical studies with mice.