Jessica J. Walsh

Jessica J. Walsh, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and a member of the UNC Neuroscience Center. She leads the Walsh Lab, which focuses on understanding neural circuit mechanisms underlying motivated social behavior using a multi-level approach to elucidate the molecular and circuit mechanisms that govern social interactions and their alterations in disease states.

Dr. Walsh earned her B.A. in Neuroscience & Behavior from Columbia University, where she began her research journey volunteering in Dr. Gerald Fischbach's laboratory. During her graduate work, she explored neural circuit mechanisms underlying social stress susceptibility at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai under Dr. Ming-Hu Han. Prior to joining UNC, she completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University with Dr. Robert Malenka, investigating neural circuit mechanisms in genetic mouse models with social deficits.

Her research focuses on neural circuit mechanisms underlying motivated behavior, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, and functional/anatomical brain mapping. The Walsh Lab specifically uses genetic mouse models to investigate how genetic mutations and experience lead to circuit adaptations that govern impaired behavior seen in autism spectrum disorders. They combine whole brain optical clearing methods, light sheet microscopy, in vivo imaging, and machine learning based behavioral analysis to elucidate neural adaptations responsible for motivated behavior.

Her publication record demonstrates a strong focus on neural circuits related to social behavior, with particular emphasis on autism spectrum disorders, serotonin and dopamine signaling, and the neural basis of prosocial behaviors. She has published extensively in high-impact journals including Nature, Nature Neuroscience, PNAS, and Neuropsychopharmacology, with research spanning from molecular mechanisms to circuit-level analyses of behavior.

Dr. Walsh mentors several trainees in her lab, including a postdoctoral fellow, multiple graduate students, and numerous undergraduate researchers. Her lab team includes researchers with diverse interests spanning from molecular biology to machine learning applications in neuroscience. The lab actively recruits postdocs and graduate students interested in joining their research on motivated behavior and psychiatric disorders.

The Walsh Lab employs a comprehensive research approach including genetic manipulation, whole brain activity mapping, viral tracing, slice physiology, optogenetics, chemogenetics, fiber photometry, and machine learning based behavioral classification to gain a nuanced understanding of neural circuits involved in motivated social behavior.