Faculty-Invited Speaker: Dr. Markita Landry
February 10 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Dr. Markita Landry from the University of California, Berkeley will be delivering a talk on February 10, 2026 at 2:00pm in the MSL seminar room (MSL 102), hosted by Dr. Jamie Piret.
If you are unable to attend in person, the talk will be presented in a hybrid format, and we invite you to register at the following Zoom link: https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/A7_9lmetR9ODOmRHyqbzBw
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information for joining the meeting.
Talk title: The importance of dopamine and oxytocin signaling for forming stable peer relationships
Abstract:
Neurons communicate through neurochemical signals that either terminate at the postsynaptic process (“wired transmission”) or diffuse beyond the synaptic cleft to modulate the activity of larger neuronal networks (“volume transmission”). Molecules such as dopamine, serotonin, and neuropeptides like oxytocin belong to this latter class of neurochemicals, called neuromodulators, and have been the pharmacological targets of antidepressants and antipsychotics for decades. However, until very recently, imaging the spatial and temporal propagation of neurochemical signals was not possible. To address this, we present a library of nanoscale near-infrared fluorescent nanosensors to image synaptic-scale neurochemical propagation of dopamine (Beyene et al., Science Advances 2019; Yang et al., Nature Protocols2021), serotonin (Jeong et al., Science Advances 2019), and oxytocin (Mun et al., PNAS 2024), and describe how to implement these nanosensors to image neurochemical signaling in living brain tissue. We show that our dopamine probes can uncover synaptic-scale mechanisms of neurochemical signaling aberrations in Huntington’s disease model mice, in which neurons lose their ability to effectively release dopamine. We also show that our oxytocin nanosensors can be used to study non-reproductive peer relationships in voles (Mun et al., PNAS 2025), revealing that oxytocin signaling is impaired in voles that show decreased peer relationship preferences (Black et al., Current Biology 2025). Finally, we discuss the relevance of these findings for advancing understanding and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric conditions, and autism spectrum disorders.
