Susan Sangha

PULSe Contributor - not currently hosting students for laboratory rotations or recruiting students in the laboratory

Current Research Interests:

My research program focuses broadly on the mechanisms underlying fear suppression, using a combination of behavioral, electrophysiological, and viral DREADDbased techniques in the freely behaving rat. While the rat is learning about fear, safety and reward signals, we track biological changes in the brain as the animal is learning in order to map out the neural circuits necessary for accurate discrimination of fear, safety and reward signals. For more information, visit www.sanghalab.com 

Selected Publications:

Christianson JP, Fernando ABP, Kazama AM, Jovanovic T, Ostroff LE, Sangha S (2012). Inhibition of fear by learned safety signals: minisymposium review. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(41): 14118.

Sangha S, Chadick JZ, Janak PH (2013). Safety encoding in the basal amygdala. Journal of Neuroscience, 33: 3744.

Sangha S, Robinson PD, Davies DA, Greba Q, Howland JG (2014). Alterations in reward, fear and safety cue discrimination after inactivation of the prelimbic and infralimbic cortices. Neuropsychopharmacology, 39: 2405.

Sangha S (2015). Plasticity of fear and safety neurons of the amygdala in response to fear extinction. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 9: 354.

Ng K, Pollock MW, Urbanczyk PJ, Sangha S (2018). Altering D1 receptor activity in the basolateral amygdala impairs fear suppression during a safety cue. Neurobiology of Learning & Memory, 147: 26.

Sangha S, Foti D (2018). Neurobiology of Abnormal Emotion and Motivated Behaviors: Integrating Animal and Human Research. 1st edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Academic Press.