Knowing the brain is a long and difficult march, so as probing the laws of the universe. With the back of Westlake University, we strive to understand “us”. May our curiosity never fades and our wisdom shines.
Biography
Dr. Yuchen Xiao received her bachelor’s degree of microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics from University of California, Los Angeles in 2016. She then went to Harvard University for her PhD studies, working on the neural mechanisms of human cognitive control and memory. After obtaining her Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences from Harvard in 2022, Dr. Xiao joined Westlake University as a Westlake Fellow and established her laboratory in the School of Life Sciences.
Research
Xiao Lab endeavors to advance our understanding of the brain from two perspectives: basic neurobiological principles and neural mechanisms of human cognitive functions. In the first perspective, Xiao Lab uses mice/rats as model organisms to probe the underlying principles of neurons and the nervous system. Specific topics to investigate include but not limited to electrophysiology (e.g. neural spiking, long-range synchronization, etc.), neurotransmitters, neural cellular organization, and genetics/epigenetics. From the second perspective, we leverages human intracranial recordings (sEEG and ECoG) of neurophysiological signals of high spatiotemporal resolution as well as electrical stimulation to examine the neural mechanism of human brain functions that are impossible to study in other animals.
Representative Publications
1. Yuchen Xiao, Chien-Chen Chou, Garth Rees Cosgrove, Nathan E Crone, Scellig Stone, Joseph R Madsen, Ian Reucroft, Yen-Cheng Shih, Daniel Weisholtz, Hsiang-Yu Yu, William S Anderson, Gabriel Kreiman. Cross-task specificity and within-task invariance of cognitive control processes. Cell Reports (2023).
2. Yuchen Xiao*, Paula Sánchez López*, Ruijie Wu*, Peng-Hu Wei, Yong-Zhi Shan, Daniel Weisholtz, Garth Rees Cosgrove, Joseph R Madsen, Scellig Stone, Guo-Guang Zhao, Gabriel Kreiman. Integration of recognition, episodic, and associative memories during complex human behavior. bioRxiv (2023). *co-first authors
3. Danyang Gong, Xinghong Dai, Yuchen Xiao, Yushen Du, Travis J Chapa, Jeffrey R Johnson, Xinmin Li, Nevan J Krogan, Hongyu Deng, Ting-Ting Wu, Ren Sun. Virus-Like Vesicles of Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus Activate Lytic Replication by Triggering Differentiation Signaling. Journal of Virology (2017).
4. Danyang Gong, Yong Hoon Kim, Yuchen Xiao, Yushen Du, Yafang Xie, Kevin K Lee, Jun Feng, Nisar Farhat, Dawei Zhao, Sara Shu, Xinghong Dai, Sumit K Chanda, Tariq M Rana, Nevan J Krogan, Ren Sun, Ting-Ting Wu. Cell host & microbe (2016).
5. Xinghong Dai, Danyang Gong, Yuchen Xiao, Ting-Ting Wu, Ren Sun, Z Hong Zhou. CryoEM and mutagenesis reveal that the smallest capsid protein cements and stabilizes Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus capsid. PNAS (2015).
Contact Us
Xiao Lab is recruiting postdoctoral research fellows.
Undergraduates students are also welcomed to join.