Busquets-Garcia Lab

Tomorrow, I will be in Zaragoza participating to a new edition of the Research Career Course organized by the @academiajoven.bsky.social . During this course we will discuss about research funding, evaluation, dissemination, ethics, emotional management, among other important topics.

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In addition, I will be giving a talk in an interesting symposium organized by @carmensandi10.bsky.social explaining some ongoing projects of the lab regarding the behavioral effects of cannabinoid drugs.

We are at @eurbehavpharm.bsky.social meeting ⛵️ Tomorrow @imanzanaressierra.bsky.social (Post. #1.7) and @carlarduaso.bsky.social (Post. #1.34) are presenting posters regarding the link between Cannabinoid drugs and Psychosis and Cannabinoid drugs and Alzheimer Disease, respectively.

Together with Giovanni Marsicano, @bolanosjuanp.bsky.social and @imanzanaressierra.bsky.social, we took profit of the #SENC2025 to have an exciting meeting with interesting findings from our @caixaresearch.bsky.social project, in which we are investigating the psychotic effects of cannabis.

Tomorrow, our PhD student
Irene Ferreres
will be presenting the poster "Impact of adolescent stress on behaviour
and neuroimmune function" (num. 116). Come to see our posters and discuss our research.

oday, our PhD student
@imanzanaressierra.bsky.social
will be presenting the poster entitled "Studying the psychotic-like states induced
by Delta-9-Tetrahidrocannabinol (THC):
new behavioral strategies to tackle the
complexity of psychosis in mouse models" (num. 305)

Our group is in the #senc2025 meeting in Gran Canaria where we will show two different stories from the lab through the presentation of two posters.

This study suggest that data-driven analysis reveals nuances missed by traditional measures to measure mouse behavior representing a step toward richer, data-driven profiling of mouse behavior.

The main findings are briefly summarized here:

➡️ Indirect associated cues through second-order conditioning triggers distinct behavioral responses compared to cues directly associated with reinforcer.

➡️ Older mice struggle with second-order conditioning

We developed a pipeline combining DeepLabCut, Keypoint-MoSeq & DeepOF to study age- and sex-dependent differences in light-tone second-order conditioning in mice.

Profiling mouse behavior with computational tools to assess age-dependent differences in associative learning Canela et al. introduce a data-driven pipeline to dissect second-order conditioning (SOC) behavioral responses in mice. Their work reveals that SOC elicits unique behavioral signatures depending on th...

🚨 New paper from our lab published in @cp-cellrepmethods.bsky.social and performed in the @researchmar.bsky.social led by our PhD student
Marc Canela.

📄More info below:
www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Our contribution, led by our postdoc @carlarduaso.bsky.social, has been to infuse MitoDREADD in the hippocampus of APP/PS1 mice, a mouse model of amyloidosis accompanied by cognitive decline, and show how the enhancement of mitochondrial activity reverse memory deficits in this mouse model.

Potentiation of mitochondrial function by mitoDREADD-Gs reverses pharmacological and neurodegenerative cognitive impairment in mice - Nature Neuroscience Activation of Gs signaling at mitochondria by mitoDREADD-Gs increases mitochondrial metabolism, leading to better memory in mouse models of dementia, directly linking brain mitochondrial deficits to c...

Our group is proud to have contributed to a new paper published in @nature.com
led by @marsicano.bsky.social, in which MitoDREADD, a new tool to enhance mitochondrial activity, show promising effects against the cognitive decline in neurodegenerative disorders.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy and honored that our ERASE project has been proposed to be funded by the @ageinves.bsky.social . 3 exciting years ahead to further investigate the brain substrates of emotion recognition in normal and pathological aging. #PID2024

The wildfire touching Marseille prevented me to be in the symposium, to share our project linking astrocytes, cannabinoid drugs and Alzheimer disease and to attend to the interesting @gliameeting.bsky.social ! I am sure the symposium conducted by @murphyroyallab.org has been a success!

Together with Ciaran @murphyroyallab.org, from the Université de Montreal, we are co-chairing today the Symposium "Understanding the roles of astrocytes in cognition and behaviour across the lifespan" in the @gliameeting.bsky.social in Marseille.

Recycle your poster, share your research! New #Neuroscience event at @researchmar.bsky.social

🗓️ July 24 ⏰15:15h 📍Marie Curie Room
👩‍🔬 Keynote by Dr. Sara Mederos (@sainsburywellcome.bsky.social)

🔗 Register: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

👉 researchmar.net/agenda/968

@bgarcialab.bsky.social

🧠 How does the brain make decisions based on indirect associations between stimuli?

🔬 A new @pnas.org study led by Dr. Busquets @bgarcialab.bsky.social (@researchmar.bsky.social)
sheds light on the role of the amygdala and cortical circuits

👉 researchmar.net/news/732/

@hospitaldelmar.bsky.social

Our postdoc @carlarduaso.bsky.social will show her postdoctoral results during the Poster session during the morning of Sunday 29th. (P1.7): Astrocytes in action: sex-, genotype-, and cannabinoid-dependent mechanisms in Alzheimer’s Disease.

Our PhD student @imanzanaressierra.bsky.social will show her PhD results during the Poster session during the morning of Sunday 29th. (P1.5): A new behavioral protocol to study positive psychotic-like states induced by Delta-9-tetrahidrocannabinol (THC) in mice.

Together with our postdoc Sílvia Castany, we will be chairing the Symposium "The immune mind: how immunity shapes mood and behavior" with very interesting talks by @murphyroyallab.org, @caromenard666.bsky.social, @agnesnadjar.bsky.social and Sílvia on Sunday 29th at 11:30h.

Heading to the @ebbsociety.bsky.social meeting in Bordeaux to enjoy 4 days in a fantastic city, meeting colleagues and friends and enjoying a great scientific program. Our lab will contribute showing our different research lines.

Our PhD Jose Antonio González Parra and postdoc Irene Ayuso are attending the European Social Club meeting in Coimbra. Today, during the poster session, we have shown our interesting results on the brain circuits controlling emotion recognition in mice. #socialbehavior #mousebehavior #neuroscience

Our results, performed in the @researchmar.bsky.social, may help understand how inferential learning circuits are altered in trauma-related or neuropsychiatric disorders.

Check out the full paper here: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#Neuroscience #Learning #Amygdala #Rodents #Behavior

Finally, by manipulating LEC→BLA projections during odor-taste associations we show that this pathway is crucial for proper inferential responses.

🧠 These findings offer new insight into the circuits behind complex learning.

Using TRAP2 mice + chemogenetics + viral tracing we showed that:

✅ The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is activated and necessary during the encoding of odor-taste associations.

✅ The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) → BLA projections are engaged during this associations.

In our new paper published in @pnas.org, led by our PhD student Jose Antoni González Parra, we used a sensory preconditioning task to study how mice learn associations between odors and tastes and how they later use that information to guide behavior.

Did you ever wonder why we often feel ungrounded attraction or aversion by certain places, smells, or foods?
Our brain does that by infering value from indirect associations in a process called higher-order conditioning.

🧵Here’s what we found using an specific paradigm in mice:

💼 Becoming a PI – how to get funding 💶

🗣️  @bgarcialab.bsky.social, Mara Dierssen, @sdelcilab.bsky.social & @marcsuarezcalvet.bsky.social 

📆 June 3 - ⏰ 15:00 CET
 📍#PRBB Marie Curie room

ℹ️ Registration: bit.ly/careermonth25

Our paper is out as a reviewed preprint on @elife.bsky.social together with the reviewers' comments . We plan to address most of the constructive comments in the weeks/months.

Dorsal hippocampus mediates light-tone sensory preconditioning task in mice doi.org/10.7554/eLif...