Category Archives: News

K-Lab returns from KSBNS 2022 with awards and gifts

The 25th Annual Meeting of the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences (KSBNS) was held on May 19-21, 2022 at Songdo Convensia in Incheon. Among the many presentations by trainees, Minyoo won the best oral presentation award and Sieun received an excellent poster presentation award. Luckily, Heeji also got a lottery prize 😉 Congratulations to all!

Sung-Yon wins the 15th Asan Award in Medicine

Sung-Yon was selected as the awardee of the 15th Asan Award in Medicine from Asan Foundation (Award for Young Medical Scientists), in recognition of his research achievements in the field of the neurobiology of body-brain communication, homeostasis, and innate behavior.

Since 2017, Asan Award in Medicine seeks to help build a healthy society by recognizing and celebrating the achievements of medical scientists in advancing our knowledge in medicine and for the benefit of our society. Congratulations SY!!!

Read more about this at Asan Medical Center Newsroom
(Also in Korean: Maeil Economy, Hankook Ilbo, Yonhap News, Kyunghyang Sinmun)

Our review on the neurobiology of gut mechanosensation was published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Mechanosensory signals from the oral and pharyngeal cavities, esophagus, stomach, and intestines. Wonder how these are generated, relayed to the brain, and regulate the many ingestive and digestive processes? Check out our review published on Jan 4, 2022 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience!

Kim, M., Heo, G., Kim, S. -Y. (2022). Neural signaling of gut mechanosensation for the control of ingestion and digestion. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/s41583-021-00544-7.

Much thanks and congrats to the first author Minyoo and Gyuryang for their awesome work and contribution to the field!

K-Lab welcomes Gilju, Hyeongjun and Junkoo

Gilju, Hyeongjun and Junkoo, who graduated from SNU or Korea Univ with (already) a publication, excellent research presentation award, or leadership in a neuroscience community, joined K-Lab as PhD students. We are very excited about their potential as future leaders in neuroscience! Welcome!!!

Our research on the neural circuits of thermoregulatory behavior was published in Neuron

Check out our new paper in Neuron! We wear coats, turn on heaters, and enjoy hot drinks on cold days. Strikingly little is known about this everyday behavior—even a forebrain region, not to speak of a cell type. We finally discovered and characterized them.

Jung, S.#, Lee, M.#, Kim, D. -Y.#, Son, C., Ahn, B. H., Heo, G., Kim, M., Park, H. -E., Koo, D. J., Park, J. H., Lee, J. W., Kim, S. -Y. (2022). A forebrain neural substrate for behavioral thermoregulationNeuron. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.09.039. #Equal contribution

Thermoregulatory behavior is a basic motivated behavior for body temperature homeostasis. Despite its fundamental importance, a forebrain region or defined neural population required for this process has yet to be established.

We found that Vgat-expressing neurons in the lateral hypothalamus (LHVgat neurons) are required for diverse thermoregulatory behaviors. The population activity of LHVgat neurons is increased during thermoregulatory behavior and bidirectionally encodes thermal punishment and reward (P&R). While this population also regulates feeding and caloric reward, inhibition of parabrachial inputs selectively impaired thermoregulatory behaviors and encoding of thermal stimulus by LHVgat neurons.

Furthermore, two-photon calcium imaging revealed a subpopulation of LHVgat neurons bidirectionally encoding thermal P&R, which is engaged during thermoregulatory behavior, but is largely distinct from caloric reward-encoding LHVgat neurons.

Our data establish LHVgat neurons as a required neural substrate for behavioral thermoregulation and point to the key role of the thermal P&R-encoding LHVgat subpopulation in thermoregulatory behavior.

Huge thanks to our team of stellar grad students, especially co-first authors Sieun, Myungsun and Dong-Yoon. It is truly an honor and privilege to work alongside them. Congrats!!!

Also view Sung-Yon’s 20-min talk on this work!