Jon Heston Email & Phone Number

Costa Mesa, Ca, Us

Greater San Diego Area

The primary goal of the Hnasko lab is to achieve a better understanding of the neural circuits that drive goal-directed behaviors, reward learning, & movement. We focus on glutamate and dopamine neurotransmission to and from midbrain neurons of particular importance to mental illness, including drug addiction, schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s Disease. Our core approaches leverage the power of modern molecular genetic tools and mouse models to visualize, manipulate, or control discrete neural circuit elements so that we may better define their roles in physiology, behavior & disease.My project is using a combination of sophisticated behavioral tasks and optogenetic manipulations to test the idea that the subthalamic nucleus is important for suppressing both movement and cognition.

My doctoral research in the White lab at UCLA used zebra finch, a species of songbird which learns its song through imitation, as a model system for understanding the neural basis of vocal motor learning and control. My dissertation project focuses on the language related transcription factor FoxP2 which, when mutated in humans, leads to a specific language impairment. Prior work had shown that levels of this gene decrease in the brain when the bird sings. I found that preventing this decrease using viral overexpression impaired the bird's ability to learn. The results of these experiments were published in the Journal of Neuroscience and I worked with the Smithsonian Natural History Museum to incorporate some of the raw data into an interactive exhibit, serving as the resident “Genome Geek” to teach visitors about the gene-behavior interactionsNext I used a chemogenetic approach to show that some of the behavioral changes that co-occur with FoxP2 decreases can be mimicked by either decreasing excitability in the basal ganglia or by increasing excitability in the cortex. These results suggested that these two reasons may work in opposition to one another and that FoxP2 decreases may cause a decrease in basal ganglia excitability. The results of this research were published in the Physiological Reports.

Worked with exhibition coordinators and graphic designers to incorporate my thesis data into the exhibit Genome: Unlocking Life's Code. The exhibition provided museum attendees with a crash course in advancements in our understanding of the genome. I helped design a panel which highlighted that the gene FoxP2 when disrupted leads to language impairments in humans and song impairments in zebra finch. The panel was interactive and allowed visitors to compare the songs of birds with intact and impaired FoxP2 function.I later visited the museum to interact with visitors and explain my work as part of the Genome Geek series.

The HEALTHY study was a national, three-year research study funded by the National Institutes of Health that will determine if changes in school food services and physical education classes, along with activities that encourage healthy behaviors, lower risk factors for type 2 diabetes. At the time the study was the largest public health study ever conducted with middle schoolers.My involvement in the project came at the evaluation phase at the end of the experiment testing whether the intervention led to changes in and/or behavior. I was the selected as the team leader for carrying out the Self-Administered Physical Activity Checklist (SAPAC). Later I was among a select subset of the research team retained to help coordinate data entry.The results of this experiment were published in New England Journal of Medicine.

Certificate, Data Science

Completed data science certificate program through UCSD Extension. This course covered the following topics: - Python - R - MySQL.

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Neuroscience

Studied the neural basis of language, vocalization, and motor control in zebra finch. In addition to the research described.

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Neurobiology And Behavior