Asaf Keller

Biography

I have been studying sensory processing for over 30 years, starting with my predoctoral work in neuroanatomy with Edward L. White, continuing with my postdoctoral training in neurophysiology with Hiroshi Asanuma at The Rockefeller, and in my own laboratory. For the past decade my work has been focused on brain circuits involved in addiction, chronic pain and affective disorders. I am particularly interested in the role of descending pain modulatory pathways, and in reward pathways—involving thalamus, prefrontal cortex, parabrachial nucleus, periaqueductal gray and related structures—in the affective components of pain, and in drug addiction. Work in our laboratory takes advantage of multidisciplinary approaches, including in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology, optogenetics, calcium and voltage-sensitive dye imaging, extracellular recordings of units, field potential and EEG from awake and anesthetized preparations, neuroanatomical tract tracing and immunocytochemical techniques, and related analytical approaches. I also have a demonstrated record of productive collaboration with mathematicians, physicists, and computational neuroscientists to study neuronal networks.

Research Interest

Chronic pain, descending pain modulation, sensory processing, drug abuse