Qiang LIU, 劉強

The integrated function of the human brain allows every individual human to have unique thoughts, perceptions, memories, and actions. These complex abilities arise from the interconnected neurons in the brain, which acquire information about the world, integrate it with ongoing knowledge and motivational states, and drive subsequent decisions and actions. Mechanistically understanding how our brain accomplishes these incredibly sophisticated functions, or even simulating our brain on a computer one day, is one of the grand challenges of our time. This is a daunting task that requires a comprehensive understanding of the brain at every level of complexity, from molecules to neurons, circuits, systems, and the underlying computational principles. Compared to the human brain with approximately 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses, the brain of the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has only 302 neurons and several thousand synapses. To achieve the ultimate goal of understanding our brain, we must first comprehend and model much simpler brains. At the scale of C. elegans, scientists have been able to map the physical wiring of the entire nervous system, known as the connectome, in an attempt to reconstruct the worm brain. However, it soon became clear that structure alone did not explain function. Without the knowledge of the cell-type-specific biophysical properties of individual neurons and the activity patterns they produce, theorists were unable to generate a unifying model that explained how the seemingly "simple" worm brain works. The Liu lab aims to address this problem by comprehensively characterizing the biophysical properties of every neuronal cell type in C. elegans and constructing highly constrained models at the single-neuron and circuit levels. The long-term goal of the Liu lab is to biophysically map the entire worm brain, reproduce neural activity patterns in different neuron types and neural circuits, and ultimately simulate how the worm brain generates behaviors. Specifically, the research of the Liu lab is focuses on the following three fronts: - Systematically recording from every neuron type in C. elegans using electrophysiology to establish a complete biophysical atlas of the worm brain. - Exploring the functional significance of diverse biophysical properties in cellular and circuit physiology, neural computation, and animal behavior. - Constructing conductance-based single-neuron models, as well as anatomically correct and biophysically accurate network models, to simulate the C. elegans nervous system.

[2026] Dimorphic Neural Network Architecture Prioritizes Sexual-related Behaviors in Male Caenorhabditis elegans. Wang, X. (Co-first Author), Liu, H. (Co-first Author), Yang, W. (Co-first Author), Yang, J., Sun, X., Liu, Q., Zhu, Y., Sun, Y., Liu, C., Shi, G., Liu, Q., Zhang, K., Di, Z., Yang, W. & Liu, H., 20 Apr 2026, In: eLife. 14, 25 p., RP102309. [2026] Efficient generation of human dorsal spinal GABAergic progenitors for the treatment of spinal cord injury. Feng, X., Wan, Y., Peng, M., Cheung, Y.-T., Lin, Z., Tam, K.-W., Fan, C., Yang, Y., Zhan, D., Zhu, H., Yu, Y., Wang, X., Liu, Q., Zhu, X., Chan, Y.-S., Cheung, M., Cheung, C.-W. & Liu, J. A., Mar 2026, In: Experimental and Molecular Medicine. 58, 3, p. 832-847. [2025] Generation of biophysical neuron model parameters from recorded