Andrew Holmes, Ph.D.

Senior Investigator

Laboratory of Behavioral and Genomic Neuroscience

NIAAA

5625 Fishers Lane
Room 2N09
Rockville, MD 20852

301-402-3519

holmesan@mail.nih.gov

Research Topics

The mission of the Laboratory of Behavioral and Genomic Neuroscience is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the causes of alcoholism and comorbid neuropsychiatric conditions, notably stressor, trauma and anxiety disorders. Our goal is to elucidate the neural basis of these devastating diseases and help identify new directions for their prevention and effective treatment. To this end, we integrate behavioral measures with state-of-the-art methods for monitoring and manipulating neural functions in order to examine how environmental insults shape brain circuits to modify behavior.

Biography

Andrew Holmes was trained in the UK, where received his Bachelor’s (Hons) degree in Psychology and his Doctorate in Behavioral Pharmacology. He received postdoctoral training in behavioral neuroscience and behavioral genetics from Dr. Jacki Crawley at the NIMH. He is currently Chief of the Laboratory of Behavioral and Genomic Neuroscience, where he studies brain regulation of emotion and cognition.

Selected Publications

  1. Silverstein SE, O'Sullivan R, Bukalo O, Pati D, Schaffer JA, Limoges A, Zsembik L, Yoshida T, O'Malley JJ, Paletzki RF, Lieberman AG, Nonaka M, Deisseroth K, Gerfen CR, Penzo MA, Kash TL, Holmes A. A distinct cortical code for socially learned threat. Nature. 2024;626(8001):1066-1072.
  2. Hagihara KM, Bukalo O, Zeller M, Aksoy-Aksel A, Karalis N, Limoges A, Rigg T, Campbell T, Mendez A, Weinholtz C, Mahn M, Zweifel LS, Palmiter RD, Ehrlich I, Lüthi A, Holmes A. Intercalated amygdala clusters orchestrate a switch in fear state. Nature. 2021;594(7863):403-407.
  3. Gunduz-Cinar O, Castillo LI, Xia M, Van Leer E, Brockway ET, Pollack GA, Yasmin F, Bukalo O, Limoges A, Oreizi-Esfahani S, Kondev V, Báldi R, Dong A, Harvey-White J, Cinar R, Kunos G, Li Y, Zweifel LS, Patel S, Holmes A. A cortico-amygdala neural substrate for endocannabinoid modulation of fear extinction. Neuron. 2023;111(19):3053-3067.e10.
  4. Bukalo O, Pinard CR, Silverstein S, Brehm C, Hartley ND, Whittle N, Colacicco G, Busch E, Patel S, Singewald N, Holmes A. Prefrontal inputs to the amygdala instruct fear extinction memory formation. Sci Adv. 2015;1(6).

Related Scientific Focus Areas

This page was last updated on Thursday, September 5, 2024