Austin Coley.

Austin Coley

Assistant professor of neurobiology
David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles

Austin Coley is assistant professor of neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. His lab focuses on the neural substrates, neural population activity and synaptic properties involved in depressive-like behaviors.

He earned his B.S. in biology at North Carolina Central University and his M.S. in cell physiology at Case Western Reserve University. He then earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Drexel University under the mentorship of Wen-Jun Gao, studying the synaptic proteins and mechanisms involved in schizophrenia. As a postdoctoral fellow in Kay Tye’s lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, he studied the effect of neural circuits on behavior, and state-dependent and region-specific cellular aberrations implicated in neuropsychiatric conditions.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Brain organoid.

What is the future of organoid and assembloid regulation?

Four experts weigh in on how to establish ethical guardrails for research on the 3D neuron clusters as these models become ever more complex.

By Claudia López Lloreda
10 December 2025 | 7 min read
Research image of variants of the ATPase subunit PSMC5/RPT6.

Insights on suicidality and autism; and more

Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 8 December.

By Jill Adams
9 December 2025 | 2 min read
A stack of papers topped by many paper shreddings against a red background.

Exclusive: Springer Nature retracts, removes nearly 40 publications that trained neural networks on ‘bonkers’ dataset

The dataset contains images of children’s faces downloaded from websites about autism, which sparked concerns at Springer Nature about consent and reliability.

By Calli McMurray
8 December 2025 | 5 min read

privacy consent banner

Privacy Preference

We use cookies to provide you with the best online experience. By clicking “Accept All,” you help us understand how our site is used and enhance its performance. You can change your choice at any time. To learn more, please visit our Privacy Policy.