Neuroscience

Joshua Sariñana, PhD, is a systems neuroscientist. However, his scientific training began in the astrobiology laboratory of George Cooper, PhD, at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Sariñana tested the hypothesis that meteorite impacts started early life on Earth and assisted in finding the first sugars on an extraterrestrial object. These findings were published in Nature.

He obtained his degree in neuroscience at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a student, he researched conditioned fear memory and hippocampal synaptic plasticity in the laboratories of Alcino Silva, PhD, and Thomas O’Dell, PhD. His work in the O’Dell lab was published in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Sariñana completed his doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, PhD, integrating genetic, physiological, and behavioral techniques. There, he focused on the role of dopamine in reinforcement and spatial learning. He showed that dopamine supports fear memory and enhances neuronal communication. Sariñana further bridged the brain’s motivation and memory systems. His research was published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and Hippocampus.

After MIT, Sariñana researched as a Harvard research fellow at the Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease with Stephen Gomperts, MD, PhD. There, he studied the impact of dopamine on network reactivation in spatial learning.

In addition to research, Sariñana was a teaching fellow at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology and was a visiting lecturer at Northeastern University’s Behavioral Neuroscience Program where he taught a course, Visual Art and the Brain.