Parise NeuroMatrix Lab Research

Core Themes

• Extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling as a driver of stress susceptibility/resilience and addiction vulnerability/recovery.
• ECM–synapse interactions and circuit plasticity in mood- and reward-related brain networks.
• Sex-specific, developmental, and lifespan changes in ECM dynamics (adolescence through adulthood and aging).
• Translational integration of rodent circuit/ECM phenotypes with human postmortem and genomic/transcriptomic datasets.

Approaches and Capabilities

• Behavior: Stress paradigms, reward/addiction models (drug exposure, seeking, and relapse-relevant assays), and anxiety-/depression-relevant behavioral tasks.
• Lifespan frameworks: Comparative studies across developmental stages and aging to define age-dependent ECM remodeling mechanisms.
• Circuit tools: Viral strategies, pathway-/cell type-specific manipulations, and fiber photometry for longitudinal circuit activity measurements.
• Molecular profiling: ECM proteins/proteases, cytokine assays, Western blotting, qPCR, transcriptomics, proteomics, and epigenetic analyses.
• Cell enrichment/isolation: Magnetic cell sorting for downstream molecular analyses.
• Imaging and spatial profiling: ECM labeling, in situ hybridization-based spatial gene expression methods, whole-brain clearing/3D imaging, and quantitative image analysis pipelines.