Professor Lan Ma is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is currently the Director of the Institutes of Brain Science at Fudan University, the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Brain Function and Brain Diseases, and the Vice President of the Chinese Society for Neuroscience.

Dr. Ma received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990 and has been a professor at Fudan University Shanghai Medical College since 1995. Professor Ma’s research focuses on drug addiction and memory mechanisms. She has made several notable discoveries, including novel epigenetic pathways by which addictive drugs regulate gene expression, the nuclear messenger function of β-arrestin proteins, the phenomenon of transgenerational inheritance of addictive craving and drug dependence, and the mechanisms by which memory engram neurons, neural circuits and receptor-biased signaling pathways mediate memory storage and retrieval.

Professor Ma has received numerous honors, including the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize for Scientific and Technological Progress and the Second Prize of the National Natural Science Award. 

Research Directions

• Intracellular signal transduction and molecular mechanisms of drug addiction

Enrollment Major

• Pharmacology

Selected Publications

• Tian Z, Song JC, Zhao XY, Zhou YM, Chen X, Le QM, Wang FF, Ma L*, Liu X*(2024). The interhemispheric amygdala-accumbens circuit encodes negative valence in mice. Science. 386(6722): eadp7520

• Jiang C*, Huang H, Yang X, Le Q, Liu X, Ma L*, Wang F*(2024). Targeting mitochondrial dynamics of morphine-responsive dopaminergic neurons ameliorates opiate withdrawal. J Clin Invest. 134(5): e171995

• Wang ZL, Jin T, Le QM, Liu C, Wang XY, Wang FF*, Ma L*(2020). Retrieval-driven hippocampal NPTX2 plasticity facilitates the extinction of cocaine-associated context memory.Biol Psychiat. 87(11): 979-991

• Zhou YM, Zhu HW, Liu ZY, Chen X, Su XJ, Ma CN, Tian Z, Huang B, Yan EH, Liu X*, Ma L*(2019). A ventral CA1 to nucleus accumbens core engram circuit mediates conditioned place preference for cocaine. Nat Neurosci. 22(12):1986-1999

• Kang J, Shi Y, Xiang B, Qu B, Su W, Zhu M, Zhang M, Bao G, Wang F, Zhang X, Yang R, Fan F, Chen X, Pei G, Ma L* (2005). A nuclear function of β-arrestin 1 in GPCR signaling: regulation of histone acetylation and gene transcription. Cell. 123: 833-847