The long-term goal of the Garcia Keller laboratory is to identify the neurological mechanisms that underlie stress-induced vulnerability in the development of substance use disorders (SUDs), and in doing so, rationally design pharmacotherapeutic treatments. Converging epidemiological studies indicate that a history of acute life-threatening events increases the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and a diagnosis of PTSD carries 30-50% comorbidity with SUDs. Such comorbidity results in greater drug use and poorer treatment outcomes. The lab uses a preclinical rodent model to understand how an acute stressful event can lead to addiction, not only facilitating drug self-administration but also precipitating relapse.

Current ongoing projects aimed to 1) understand the neurocircuitry and cell-type specificity involved in stress and addiction using calcium imaging, 2) study the role of the pentapartite synapse in stress and addiction, first focusing in microglia's role and 3) study novel therapeutic treatments for PSTD and SUD targeting key genes/proteins of interest.

The CGK lab is starting its GitHub with two main codes, CellSelect-3DMorph and Calcium Imaging Analysis Code.

CellSelect-3DMorph is a MATLAB-based script that analyzes cell morphology from 3D images, by reconstructing the cells from the fluorescent pixels. The reconstruction is measuring all cells: cell volume and territorial volume, Ramification index, branch length, number of branches and endpoints, and more. CellSelect, as the name implies, adds the possibility of rejecting any cell that is not fully in the frame of the image and whose morphology cannot be calculated properly. To try it out click here

CellSelect-3DMorph is a Forked code from Elisa York's 3DMorph, which was updated and new features added.

Pipeline for calcium imaging future updates to come.