Faculty

Biography

“Those of us who do electrophysiological recording routinely will argue that there are few events as wondrous and exciting as listening to the sound of a live neuron speaking its own particular language and seeing this language as bursting electrical patterns flickering across the oscilloscope screen.”
–Rodolfo Llinas in `I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self`

I started my neuroscience career by studying ion channels on retinal ganglion cells and also did circuit mapping on cortical slices. However, I am most interested in deciphering how single neurons integrate (or compute) synaptic inputs under in vivo conditions. Through studying synaptic potentials in vivo, I hope to understand the transduction and transformation of neural signals in the neural circuits. For my Ph.D., I developed dual whole-cell patch-clamp recordings in cat visual cortex, which allowed me to observe synchronous high-frequency membrane-potential fluctuations in pairs of neurons in vivo. I also came up with an in vivo configuration where I stimulated a single simple cell while recording the membrane potential of a complex cell to test their connectivity. During my postdoc, I applied in vivo whole-cell recordings in head-fixed, task-performing mice, which led me to discovered reafference-driven inhibition in the barrel cortex during active tactile sensing and a feedforward mechanism for sensory gating. To understand the roles of diverse types of GABAergic inhibitory interneurons, I went on to record three major types of interneurons across layers of barrel cortex in behaving mice and revealed their specific temporal dynamics in behavior. In 2019, I joined the School of Life Sciences and IDG/McGovern Institute of Brain Research at Peking University. My research now focuses on understanding mechanisms underlying cognitive control and movement generation.

Education

2006 - 2011, Ph.D., Neuroscience, Northwestern University
2004 - 2006, MSc, Anatomy and Neurobiology, Dalhousie University
1999 - 2003, BS, Fundamental Science, Tsinghua University

Professional Experience

2012 - 2019, Postdoc, Janelia Research Campus

Books and Book Chapter

Svoboda K and Yu J. (2018) Barrel Cortex. Handbook of Brain Microcircuits, pp. 59-66. Oxford University Press

Teaching

Behavioral Neuroscience: I cover topics related to using learned behaviors in animals to understand the neural substrates and mechanisms of cognition.
Data Science Fundamentals： This is practically a mathematical statistics course.  
Frontiers in Neurobiology (seminar)
Undergraduate Thesis in Physiology and Neurobiology

We are working  on the following topics:
1. Neural mechanisms of waiting
2. Neural representations in the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia during reaction time behaviors
3. Neural basis of time

Zheng, Q., Liu, Y., Huang, Y., Cao, J., Wang, X., & Yu, J. (2025). The role of striatum in controlling waiting during reactive and self-timed behaviors. The Journal of Neuroscience, e1820242025. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1820-24.2025
Yu, J., Hu, H., Agmon, A., & Svoboda, K. (2019). Recruitment of GABAergic Interneurons in the Barrel Cortex during Active Tactile Behavior. Neuron, 104(2), 412-427.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.07.027
Yu, J., Gutnisky, D. A., Hires, S. A., & Svoboda, K. (2016). Layer 4 fast-spiking interneurons filter thalamocortical signals during active somatosensation. Nature Neuroscience, 19(12), 1647–1657. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4412
Yu, J., & Ferster, D. (2013). Functional Coupling from Simple to Complex Cells in the Visually Driven Cortical Circuit. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(48), 18855–18866. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2665-13.2013
Yu, J., & Ferster, D. (2010). Membrane Potential Synchrony in Primary Visual Cortex during Sensory Stimulation. Neuron, 68(6), 1187–1201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.11.027
Yu, J., Daniels, B. A., & Baldridge, W. H. (2009). Slow excitation of cultured rat retinal ganglion cells by activating group I metabotropic glutamate receptors. Journal of Neurophysiology, 102(6), 3728–3739. https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00650.2009
Yu, J., Anderson, C. T., Kiritani, T., Sheets, P. L., Wokosin, D. L., Wood, L., & Shepherd, G. M. G. (2008). Local-Circuit Phenotypes of Layer 5 Neurons in Motor-Frontal Cortex of YFP-H Mice. Frontiers in Neural Circuits, 2, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/neuro.04.006.2008

Our lab is interested in understanding how cognitive signals influence motor outputs.