The Flanigan Lab

Impaired social behavior is a common symptom across different neuropsychiatric, neurodevelopmental, and neurodegenerative disorders. However, there are currently no treatments available for normalizing social functioning in the context of any disorder. Research in the Flanigan Lab focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms mediating social behaviors in a healthy state and how these mechanisms may become disrupted in disease. In particular, we are interested in how exposure to stress, sleep deprivation, or drugs of abuse alter social reward, aggression, social cognition, and social vigilance. To achieve this, we employ cutting-edge tools for monitoring and manipulating neural activity and gene expression in mouse models (see Techniques tab). We also employ machine learning based platforms for tracking and classifying mouse behavior, which allows us unprecedented unbiased insight into the specific behavioral motifs that are influenced by our manipulations. We hope that the scientific insights generated by our laboratory will contribute to the development of future treatments aimed at normalizing social behavior in the context of neuropsychiatric disorders like addiction, depression, and anxiety, among many others.

I am an NIAAA K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award Fellow and will be opening my independent laboratory as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and the Alcohol Research Center at the Medical University of South Carolina in 2024. If you are interested in joining the lab, please reach out to me via e-mail (technicians and post-doctoral fellows).

To get a sense of the lab culture I’d like to build and my expectations for trainees, please see the Flanigan Lab Handbook

My recent publication in Nature Communications: Sex-specific regulation of binge alcohol drinking, social, and arousal behaviors in mice by subcortical serotonin 5HT2c-containing neurons.