Scholar Spotlight: Billy You Bun Lau
“My research helps us understand how the brain adapts under healthy conditions and what might go wrong in brain disorders.”
Billy You Bun Lau
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology
I study how the brain changes with experience, such as when a mouse learns from a mother to care for pups that are not her own, and how mutations in genes associated with human brain disorders affect these changes.
My research focuses on identifying the neural mechanisms underlying experience-dependent changes during typical behaviors, and how disruptions in such mechanisms lead to neuropsychiatric disorders, such as Rett syndrome.
Throughout my research career, I realized most neuroscience studies primarily focused on male subjects. This struck me as odd, given the well-documented differences in behavior between the sexes. It was particularly surprising in the context of Rett syndrome. I began addressing this gap with Associate Professor Keerthi Krishnan when we were postdoctoral researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and have continued this work at UT.
I investigate how certain brain cells involved in controlling activity and the structures around them interact to influence how the brain processes information from the senses during adult learning, using mouse models and a combination of in vivo chemogenetic and optogenetic manipulations, in vivo calcium imaging, and molecular techniques.
Rett syndrome is a neuropsychiatric disorder that predominantly affects girls, but only a small number of labs use female models to study the disorder. My results are generated from female mouse models, which are more accurately reflecting the human Rett syndrome population. My results also come from freely behaving animals, rather than from cell culture or ex vivo experiments, which lack behavioral context.
Why I Do What I Do
When I was a child, my grandfather passed away from lung cancer. He was a frequent smoker and knew it was harmful, yet he didn’t quit. This experience made me wonder how we control our behavior—or fail to—and sparked my desire in understanding the brain.
Currently Working On
We are developing a project to record activities of single neurons in mice as they undergo learning over multiple days, using miniscope calcium imaging technique.
This approach allows us to ask: how neuronal activity patterns change (plasticity) during learning; what types of neurons exhibit plasticity; which brain regions are essential for this learning process; and how mutations in genes associated with brain disorders affect neural plasticity and learning.
By addressing these questions, we aim to uncover fundamental principles of how the brain supports learning and how these processes may be disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders.
By Amy Beth Miller