Tarun, a 2019 CCB Fellow, is a Research Fellow in the Neuronal Ensembles in Addiction Section at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Under the mentorship of Dr. Bruce T. Hope, he is developing tools to longitudinally monitor neuronal activity during drug-taking and drug-seeking, and to permanently label neurons of interest with high temporal resolution during these behaviors. He can then investigate cellular, molecular and structural alterations specific to these tagged neurons following maladaptive drug-related behaviors.
As a CCB Fellow, he will apply these tools to study how maladaptive associations formed between drugs and drug-associated stimuli during drug-taking can trigger relapse long after a persons' last exposure to the drug.