Zheng (Herbert) Wu, Ph.D.

Zheng (Herbert) Wu is a joint postdoctoral fellow in the laboratories of Drs. Richard Axel and Michael Shadlen in the Department of Neuroscience at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard University and his B.S. from Fudan University in China. His graduate work focused on dissecting the neural circuits underlying parental behavior in mice. Using a battery of molecular and genetic tools, he identified a population of neurons in the anterior hypothalamus as key regulators of parental care. He has published in journals such as Nature and Science, and was a guest speaker at the Society for Social Neuroscience meeting.

As a postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Wu is interested in understanding working memory and context-dependent decision making. To elucidate their neural basis, he has developed an odor-guided delayed-match-to-sample task in mice and is using a wide variety of techniques including electrophysiology, calcium imaging and optogenetics. These experiments will establish a system to address context-dependent decision making and will have broad implications for understanding the neural circuits of flexible behavior in health and disease.