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

Cara Pugliese.

Autism program chief among National Institutes of Health layoffs

The termination is one of more than 1,000 employee cuts at the U.S. agency this week.

By Rachel Zamzow
21 February 2025 | 3 min read
Illustration of columns of text with eyes peeking out from behind the central column to look at a bright blue spot.

This paper changed my Life: Bill Newsome reflects on a quadrilogy of classic visual perception studies

The 1970s papers from Goldberg and Wurtz made ambitious mechanistic studies of higher brain functions seem feasible.

By Bill Newsome
21 February 2025 | 6 min read
Interconnected lines form a world map.

Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure

Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.

By Dan Goodman
20 February 2025 | 7 min read