Hongyu Sun

• Health Sciences Building, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

Dr. Hongyu Sun received his MD from Tianjin University in 1997 and his PhD in Neuroscience from Carleton University in 2008. He completed his postdoctoral training at Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. He later joined the Carleton Neuroscience department in 2016.

Eligible to supervise at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Courses Taught:

• NEUR 2002: Introduction to Statistics in Neuroscience

Scholarly Work & Research Interests:

The Sun Lab focuses on understanding how early-life experiences affect brain development and cause long-term psychiatric and neurological consequences. They use a combination of electrophysiological, behavioral, neuroimaging, modeling, and molecular biology techniques to address these questions.

• A predominant focus of the Sun Lab is early-life epilepsy
  • Investigating whether a selective neuronal ensemble mediates the pathophysiology of early life epilepsy
  • Discovering novel molecular signaling pathways
• Interaction between early-life stress and brain development
  • Examining how early-life stress during the critical period reshapes the development of glutamatergic synapses and causes long-term cognitive deficits

Selected publications:

Sun H, Takesian A, Wang TT, Lippman-Bell JJ, Hensch TK, Jensen FE. (2018) Early seizures prematurely unsilence auditory synapses to disrupt thalamocortical critical period plasticity. Cell Report. 23(9):2533-2540.

Sun H, Juul H, Jensen FE. (2016) Models of hypoxia and ischemia-induced seizures. Journal of Neuroscience Method, 15;260:252-60.

Sun H, Kosaras B, Klein PM, Jensen FE. (2013). Mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 activation negatively regulates Polo-like kinase 2-mediated homeostatic compensation following neonatal seizures. PNAS, 110(13): 5199-204.

Talos DM, Sun H, Zhou X*, Fitzgerald E, Jackson M, Lan V, Joseph A, Jensen FE. (2012) Inhibition of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTORC1) pathway prevents later life epilepsy and autism-like behavior following early life seizures. PLoS ONE, 7(5): e35885. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035885.

Zhou C, Lippman Bell JJ, Sun H*, Jensen FE. (2011) Hypoxia-Induced neonatal seizures diminish silent synapses and long-term potentiation in hippocampal CA1 neurons. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(50): 18211-18222.