Vidita Vaidya
TIFR, Mumbai
Vidita Vaidya received her undergraduate degree from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai in Life Sciences and Biochemistry. She obtained her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Yale University in the lab of Prof. Ronald Duman. Her postdoctoral work was done at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden with Prof. Ernest Arenas and at the University of Oxford in the UK with Prof. David Grahame-Smith. She joined the Department of Biological Sciences, TIFR, as a faculty member in March 2000. Her research group's work has been recognized by the National Bioscientist Award in 2012, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Medical Sciences in 2015, and the Infosys Prize in Life Sciences in 2022. In 2019, she received the Nature Award for Mentoring in Science in the mid-career category and, in 2021, the JC Bose National Fellowship from the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB). She is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), and the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), as well as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. She is committed to enhancing equity and diversity in academia and working to break down the barriers that prevent academic working environments from being inclusive spaces. She was elected Fellow of IASc in 2021.
Session 2B: Symposium on “Neurocircuits Governing Behavior”
Mapping the Neurocircuit Responses to a Serotonergic Psychedelic – Relevance to Anxiety
There has been a recent renewal of interest in the therapeutic potential of serotonergic psychedelics. In my talk, I will discuss our recent work mapping the precise neurocircuit that drives the reduction in anxiety-like behavior noted with the serotonergic psychedelic DOI (2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine). We uncover the essential role of ventral hippocampus (vHpc) GABAergic interneurons in the anxiolytic effect evoked by DOI. Integrating anatomical, pharmacological, and genetic approaches, we show that 5-HT2A receptors in the CA1/subiculum (CA1/sub) region of the vHpc are required for the anxiolytic action of DOI. In vivo electrophysiology and opto-tagging experiments indicate that DOI enhances the firing rate of hippocampal fast-spiking parvalbumin (PV)-positive interneurons, most of which express the 5-HT2A receptors. Restoration of 5-HT2A receptors in PV-positive interneurons in a loss-of-function background reinstated the anxiolytic responses evoked by DOI in the vHpc CA1/sub-region. Collectively, our results localize the acute anxiolytic action of a serotonergic psychedelic to 5-HT2A receptors in the ventral hippocampus and specifically identify PV-positive fast-spiking cells as a cellular trigger for the psychedelic-induced relief of anxiety-like behavior.