Fergil Mills

Fergil Mills is an Assistant Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Utah, affiliated with the Molecular Biology Program. His research focuses on uncovering circuit-level mechanisms underlying motivated behaviors through advanced techniques.

• In vivo electrophysiology
• Calcium imaging
• Optogenetics
• Computational behavior analysis

His work spans addiction neuroscience, social learning, and synaptic plasticity, with publications in high-impact journals like Cell and Nature Neuroscience. The Mills Lab explores neural circuits in the amygdala-striatum and ventral tegmental area, linking cellular mechanisms to complex behaviors.

Key research trends include:

• Valence encoding in neural circuits (2022)
• Social information transfer mechanisms (2018)
• Cocaine-induced synaptic plasticity (2017)
• β-catenin's role in cognitive flexibility (2014)