About

Dr. Gül Dolen is a Professor and the Bob & Renee Parsons Endowed Chair in the Department of Neuroscience and Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also affiliated with the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. Additionally, Dr. Dolen maintains an Adjunct Professorship in Neuroscience and Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding neural mechanisms, and she has received numerous prestigious awards including the Joukowsky Family Foundation Outstanding Dissertation Award, the Conquer Fragile X Rising Star Award, the Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the Society for Social Neuroscience Early Career Award, the Searle Scholars Award, and the Johns Hopkins University President’s Frontier Award.

Research topics

• Neuroscience
• Biology
• Psychology
• Medicine
• Bioinformatics

Selected publications

• The Emerging Neurobiology of Psychedelics: Critical Periods, Metaplasticity, and Extracellular Matrix Remodeling

  Annual Review of Neuroscience · 2026-04-16

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Psychedelics are a broad category of compounds that induce altered states of consciousness. These drugs have shown remarkable promise for the treatment of debilitating disorders ranging from posttraumatic stress disorder to depression and addiction. Although early studies focused on linking binding targets of psychedelics to their therapeutic effects, these pharmacological and biochemical explanations fail to account for the diversity, durability, and context dependence of psychedelics' clinical and acute subjective effects. More recently, neurobiological explanations offer fresh insights and demonstrate that a unifying property of psychedelics is that these compounds reopen critical periods, induce metaplasticity, and reorganize the extracellular matrix. Here we review this evidence and argue that the neurobiological and therapeutic effects of psychedelics challenge the biochemical imbalance model that has dominated translational neuroscience since the 1950s and favor instead a learning model that better accounts for psychedelics' unique therapeutic profile.

  PublisherDOI

• Amygdala AVPR1A mediates susceptibility to chronic social isolation in female mice

  Nature Communications · 2025-11-04 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Sex differences in responsiveness to social stress in adulthood are highly conserved across species, with females more sensitive to isolation. Here, we show that Arginine vasopressin receptor 1a (AVPR1A) in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) mediates the enhanced susceptibility of females to post-pubertal chronic social isolation stress (CSIS) in mice. Chemogenetic activation of AVPR1ACeA circuits induces anxiety-related behaviors in both sexes. However, genetic, pharmacological, chemogenetic and optogenetic loss of function approaches support the idea that it is only endogenously engaged in females in the context of CSIS. Using a combination of virus-based tools, we identified a major source of AVP ligand in the posterodorsal part of the medial amygdala (MePD) as well as an important downstream target of AVPR1ACeA neurons, the dorsolateral striatum (DLS). Loss of function approaches identified three nodes in the circuit that provide sex-specificity in the effects of CSIS on anxiety-related behaviors: 1) ERα signaling in AVPMePD neurons; 2) engagement of the AVPR1A pathway in the CeA; and 3) number of AVPR1ACeA projections to the DLS. These data support new therapeutic applications for AVPR1A antagonists in women experiencing social isolation or loneliness. Females are more sensitive to social exclusion and loneliness, risk factors for anxiety and stressrelated disorders. Here, the authors identified molecular signals in the amygdala that make females more susceptible to effects of chronic social isolation in mice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cephalopod-omics: Emerging Fields and Technologies in Cephalopod Biology

  Integrative and Comparative Biology · 2023-06-27 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access

  Few animal groups can claim the level of wonder that cephalopods instill in the minds of researchers and the general public. Much of cephalopod biology, however, remains unexplored: the largest invertebrate brain, difficult husbandry conditions, and complex (meta-)genomes, among many other things, have hindered progress in addressing key questions. However, recent technological advancements in sequencing, imaging, and genetic manipulation have opened new avenues for exploring the biology of these extraordinary animals. The cephalopod molecular biology community is thus experiencing a large influx of researchers, emerging from different fields, accelerating the pace of research in this clade. In the first post-pandemic event at the Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC) conference in April 2022, over 40 participants from all over the world met and discussed key challenges and perspectives for current cephalopod molecular biology and evolution. Our particular focus was on the fields of comparative and regulatory genomics, gene manipulation, single-cell transcriptomics, metagenomics, and microbial interactions. This article is a result of this joint effort, summarizing the latest insights from these emerging fields, their bottlenecks, and potential solutions. The article highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the cephalopod-omics community and provides an emphasis on continuous consolidation of efforts and collaboration in this rapidly evolving field.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Psychedelics reopen the social reward learning critical period

  Nature · 2023-06-14 · 320 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Psychedelics are a broad class of drugs defined by their ability to induce an altered state of consciousness 1,2 . These drugs have been used for millennia in both spiritual and medicinal contexts, and a number of recent clinical successes have spurred a renewed interest in developing psychedelic therapies 3–9 . Nevertheless, a unifying mechanism that can account for these shared phenomenological and therapeutic properties remains unknown. Here we demonstrate in mice that the ability to reopen the social reward learning critical period is a shared property across psychedelic drugs. Notably, the time course of critical period reopening is proportional to the duration of acute subjective effects reported in humans. Furthermore, the ability to reinstate social reward learning in adulthood is paralleled by metaplastic restoration of oxytocin-mediated long-term depression in the nucleus accumbens. Finally, identification of differentially expressed genes in the ‘open state’ versus the ‘closed state’ provides evidence that reorganization of the extracellular matrix is a common downstream mechanism underlying psychedelic drug-mediated critical period reopening. Together these results have important implications for the implementation of psychedelics in clinical practice, as well as the design of novel compounds for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disease.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Psychedelics Reopen the Social Reward Learning Critical Period

  Figshare · 2023-01-01

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  Supplementary code for data analysis

  PublisherDOI

• Amygdala AVPR1A mediates susceptibility to chronic social isolation in females

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2023-02-15 · 7 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Summary Females are more sensitive to social exclusion, which could contribute to their heightened susceptibility to anxiety disorders. Chronic social isolation stress (CSIS) for at least 7 weeks after puberty induces anxiety-related behavioral adaptations in female mice. Here, we show that Arginine vasopressin receptor 1a ( Avpr1a )-expressing neurons in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) mediate these sex-specific effects, in part, via projections to the caudate putamen. Loss of function studies demonstrate that AVPR1A signaling in the CeA is required for effects of CSIS on anxiety-related behaviors in females but has no effect in males or group housed females. This sex-specificity is mediated by AVP produced by a subpopulation of neurons in the posterodorsal medial nucleus of the amygdala that project to the CeA. Estrogen receptor alpha signaling in these neurons also contributes to preferential sensitivity of females to CSIS. These data support new therapeutic applications for AVPR1A antagonists in women.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prenatal immune stress blunts microglia reactivity, impairing neurocircuitry

  Nature · 2022-09-28 · 130 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Prenatal immune stress induces a prolonged blunting of microglia activation that impacts striatal connectivity

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2021-12-28 · 2 citations

  preprint

  Abstract Recent studies suggested that microglia, the primary brain immune cells, can affect circuit connectivity and neuronal function 1–3 . Microglia infiltrate the neuroepithelium early in embryonic development and are maintained in the brain throughout adulthood 4,5 . Several maternal environmental factors, such as aberrant microbiome, immune activation, and poor nutrition, can influence prenatal brain development 6–8 . Nevertheless, it is unknown how changes in the prenatal environment instruct the developmental trajectory of infiltrating microglia, which in turn affect brain development and function. Here we show that after maternal immune activation (MIA) microglia from the offspring have a long-lived decrease in immune reactivity (blunting) across the developmental trajectory. The blunted immune response was concomitant with changes in the chromatin accessibility and reduced transcription factor occupancy of the open chromatin. Single cell RNA sequencing revealed that MIA does not induce a distinct subpopulation but rather decreases the contribution to inflammatory microglia states. Prenatal replacement of MIA microglia with physiological infiltration of naïve microglia ameliorated the immune blunting and restored a decrease in presynaptic vesicle release probability onto dopamine receptor type-two medium spiny neurons, indicating that aberrantly formed microglia due to an adverse prenatal environment impacts the long-term microglia reactivity and proper striatal circuit development.

  PublisherDOI

• The Lesser Pacific Striped Octopus, Octopus chierchiae: An Emerging Laboratory Model

  Frontiers in Marine Science · 2021-12-13 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  Cephalopods have the potential to become useful experimental models in various fields of science, particularly in neuroscience, physiology, and behavior. Their complex nervous systems, intricate color- and texture-changing body patterns, and problem-solving abilities have attracted the attention of the biological research community, while the high growth rates and short life cycles of some species render them suitable for laboratory culture. Octopus chierchiae is a small octopus native to the central Pacific coast of North America whose predictable reproduction, short time to maturity, small adult size, and ability to lay multiple egg clutches (iteroparity) make this species ideally suited to laboratory culture. Here we describe novel methods for multigenerational culture of O. chierchiae , with emphasis on enclosure designs, feeding regimes, and breeding management. O. chierchiae bred in the laboratory grow from a 3.5 mm mantle length at hatching to an adult mantle length of approximately 20–30 mm in 250–300 days, with 15 and 14% survivorship to over 400 days of age in first and second generations, respectively. O. chierchiae sexually matures at around 6 months of age and, unlike most octopus species, can lay multiple clutches of large, direct-developing eggs every ∼30–90 days. Based on these results, we propose that O. chierchiae possesses both the practical and biological features needed for a model octopus that can be cultured repeatedly to address a wide range of biological questions.

  PublisherDOI

• The lesser Pacific striped octopus, <i>Octopus chierchiae</i> : an emerging laboratory model for the study of octopuses

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2021-08-06

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Cephalopods have the potential to become useful experimental models in various fields of science, particularly in neuroscience, physiology, and behavior. Their complex nervous systems, intricate color- and texture-changing body patterns, and problem-solving abilities have attracted the attention of the biological research community, while the high growth rates and short life cycles of some species render them suitable for laboratory culture. Octopus chierchiae is a small octopus native to the central Pacific coast of North America whose predictable reproduction, short time to maturity, small adult size, and ability to lay multiple egg clutches (iteroparity) make this species ideally suited to laboratory culture. Here we describe novel methods for culture of O. chierchiae, with emphasis on enclosure designs, feeding regimes, and breeding management. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of multigenerational culture of O. chierchiae. Specifically, O. chierchiae bred in the laboratory grows from a 3.5-millimeter mantle length at hatching to an adult mantle length of approximately 20-30 millimeters in 250-300 days, with 14-15% survivorship to over 400 days of age in first and second generations. O. chierchiae sexually matures at around an estimated six months of age and, unlike most octopus species, can lay multiple clutches of eggs, approximately every 30-90 days. Eggs are large and hatchlings emerge as direct developing octopuses. Based on these results, we propose that O. chierchiae possesses both the practical and biological features needed for a model octopus that can be cultured repeatedly to address a wide range of fundamental biological questions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Dissecting the role of vasopressin in regulating the critical period for social reward learning

  NIH · $1.7M · 2019–2025

• NIH Grant F30MH067431

  NIH · $262k · 2008

• Characterization of a novel population of parvocellular oxytocin neurons controlling social reward learning

  NIH · $958k · 2018–2021

• Characterization of the role of Fmr1 in oxytocin neuronal subtypes

  NIH · $2.4M · 2020–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Mark F. Bear

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  38 shared

• E. Lewis

  Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

  37 shared

• Loyal A. Goff

  Johns Hopkins University

  35 shared

• Romain Nardou

  Johns Hopkins University

  31 shared

• Genevieve Stein-O’Brien

  29 shared

• Alejandra V. Patino

  Duke University

  22 shared

• Cooper D. Grossman

  California Institute of Technology

  22 shared

• Daniel Giovinazzo

  Johns Hopkins Medicine

  15 shared