Biosketch | Chaoyi Zhang

Psychiatric disease. What circuit-level dysfunction gives rise to psychiatric disorders — and can we see it in a primate brain?
The social brain. How do primates compute social behavior and emotion, and what happens when those circuits go wrong?
4D systems neuroscience. Brain-wide, volume by volume, moment by moment — how do whole-brain dynamics give rise to behavior?
Ultrasound as neurotechnology. Functional ultrasound imaging fills the missing scale between electrodes and fMRI. I build the tools as much as I use them.
The evolution of intelligence. What does comparing brains across species tell us about how natural intelligence was built?

2023 - current
Postdoc

Guoping Feng Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.
- Investigating the biological mechanism of psychiatric diseases
- Group lead (Feng Lab side) for the MIT Simons Center for the Social Brain Targeted Project, Marmoset Circuits: Developing Knowledge and Tools to Facilitate Therapeutic Development for ASD
2022 - 2023
Postdoc

Gord Fishell Lab, Harvard Medical School, Boston, U.S.
- Investigated how the wS1 circuits assembled to control whisking behavior during the development
2016 - 2022
Ph.D.

Hailan Hu Lab, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
- Explored the roles and dynamics of different mPFC cell types in social competition behavior
- Deciphered the relationship within mPFC microcircuits via in vivo optrodes recording and miniature two-photon microscope
2016 summer
Summer Scholar

Minmin Luo Lab, National institute of Biological Sciences (NIBS), Beijing, China
- Explored the roles of dopamine neurons and serotonin neurons in reward behavior via fiber photometry recording and optogenetics
2013 - 2016
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Xiaokun Li Lab, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
- Validated the repair function of the basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) on the blood brain barrier after brain injury on mice model