Viney Group | Neural Circuit Vulnerability Group

Research Programme

Spatial orientation and memory

How does the brain maintain a sense of direction and encode memories of places and events?

We investigate neural circuits that support navigation and spatial cognition, with a particular focus on head direction cells in the anterior thalamus and their interactions with hippocampal memory networks. Recent work includes the identification of specialized subpopulations of thalamic head direction cells and demonstrating how pathological protein aggregation disrupts directional coding and spatial orientation.

Key papers: Hijazi & Jiang Current Biology 2026; Jiang & Hijazi Cell Reports 2025.

Neural circuit vulnerability

Why are some neurons and circuits particularly susceptible to pathological protein aggregation and neurodegeneration?

Our research examines vulnerable neuronal populations within the Papez circuit and related memory networks across mice and humans. Recent research includes demonstrating the selective accumulation of pathological forms of tau within specific glutamatergic subcellular domains in the human thalamus and characterising the effects of protein aggregation on neuronal activity, connectivity, and circuit integrity.

Key papers: Sarkany et al Acta Neuropathologica 2024; Jiang & Hizjai et al Cell Reports 2025; Viney et al Cell Reports 2022.

Cell-type specialisation and neuronal coordination

How do distinct neuronal subpopulations contribute to circuit function across behavioural states, cognitive processes, and disease?

We combine in vivo electrophysiology, juxtacellular labelling, neuroanatomy, and molecular profiling to define specialised neuronal subpopulations and their roles within distributed brain networks. Previous work has characterised multiple classes of GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons involved in oscillatory coordination, memory processing, and behavioural-state-dependent activity.

Key papers: Kiraly et al Nat Comm 2023; Salib et al J Neurosci 2019; Viney et al eLife 2018; Viney et al Nat Neuro 2013

Translation and neuropharmacology

Can mechanisms of early circuit dysfunction reveal biomarkers and new opportunities for therapeutic intervention in Alzheimer's disease and related disorders?

Our goal is to identify and define vulnerable neuronal subpopulations, biochemical pathways, and circuit-level biomarkers that contribute to early cognitive decline. By integrating systems neuroscience with human neuropathology, we aim to uncover therapeutic targets and translational opportunities for slowing or preventing neurodegenerative disease.

Recent publications, awards, invited talks, funding successes, and updates from the Neural Circuit Vulnerability Group

April-May 2026

• We are delighted to announce the acceptance of our research article, entitled Diversity and sensorimotor specialization of head direction cells in the mouse thalamus (Hijazi & Jiang et al), which will be published in Current Biology in June.
• In Trinity Term we welcome Malaz who will conduct her MSc dissertation on defining the connectivity of anterodorsal thalamic neurons. She will be supervised by Dr Sara Hijazi.
• We also welcome Lareb for her FHS Research Project on defining subpopulations of glutamatergic neurons in the mouse and human anterior thalamus.

January 2026

• Welcome to Dr Francesca Corsi who has joined the Viney group for a 4-month project on defining the photomodulation of different kinds of head direction cells in the mouse. Dr Corsi is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Professor Claudia Gargini at the Physiology Laboratory at the University of Pisa, where she investigates neuroprotection and resilience mechanisms in retinal degeneration. She obtained her PhD in Science of Drugs and Bioactive Substances at the University of Pisa, during which she explored these mechanisms using pharmacological, nutraceutical, and photobiomodulation approaches. Her research focuses on experimental models of retinal neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation.
• We also welcome MSc in Clinical and Therapeutic Neuroscience student Matthew for a 3-month research project on the relationship between proinflammatory peptides and amyloid deposits in the human brain.

December 2025

• Shan Jiang has officially been conferred the title of Doctor of Philosophy, having successfully passed her viva last month. Her examiners were Professor Trevor Sharp (Dept. Pharmacology, Oxford) and Professor Julija Krupic (UCL). Congratulations Dr Jiang!

November 2025

• Our paper, entitled “Pathological tau alters head direction signaling and induces spatial disorientation" has now been published in Cell Reports! Press release here: https://www.pharm.ox.ac.uk/news/new-paper-from-the-viney-group-explores-mechanisms-of-spatial-disorientation

October 2025

• Tim has received an 'Excellent Supervisor Award' from the Medical Sciences Division. The award was received from Prof Gavin Screaton (Head of the Medical Sciences Division) at the Teaching Excellence Awards ceremony at Pembroke College on 22nd October. Tim is very grateful to current and former lab members for nominating him.

September 2025

• ***New preprint alert*** Granularity of thalamic head direction cells - now available on bioRxiv

August 2025

• Congratulations to Barbara who received an Award of Excellence from the Department of Pharmacology

July 2025

• Barbara attends the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Toronto
• Barbara officially graduated with a DPhil in Pharmacology - huge congratulations to Dr Sarkany!
• We welcome Neina, a Year 12 student, for one week of work experience. She will help reconstruct head direction cells using a drawing tube microscope

June 2025

• Lab retreat to the Wittenham Clumps
  
• Jacqueline presents a poster at the ARUK Thames Valley Network Research Day at the Mathematical Institute in Oxford
• This month we welcomed Year 5 pupils from East Oxford Primary School to the Department, where Tim led the 'Brain Team', providing hands on experience with microscopes, brain sections, and models of different brains

May 2025

• We welcome Danial who joins us for his MSc project on the role of certain NMDA receptor agonists and amyloids in cognitive dysfunction
• We also welcome Ahmad who joins us for an FHS project on cell-type-specific contributions to amyloidosis in the human brain
• Shan presents a flash talk at the Spring Hippocampal Research Conference in Verona https://hippo.euroconferences.org/

March 2025

• Barbara gave a flash talk on the contribution of the thalamus in primary and secondary tauopathies at the annual Oxford Neuroscience Symposium

February 2025

• Congratulations to Barbara Sarkany who successfully defended her DPhil thesis, entitled 'Contribution of the rostral thalamus to tauopathy'. Her examiners were Prof Zoltan Molnar (DPAG, Oxford) and Dr Barry Boland (University College Cork).
• Congratulations to Shan for passing her Confirmation of DPhil status!
• Tim gave a talk at an EMBO Workshop on "Subcortical Sensory Circuits: From Perception to Behavior", in Assisi, Italy https://meetings.embo.org/event/25-subcortical-circuits

January 2025

• A warm welcome to Jacqueline, a visiting neuroscience student from St Peter's College. She will join us for 6 months to work on defining different kinds of head direction cells in the mouse thalamus using immunohistochemistry and neuronal reconstructions.

November 2024

• ***New preprint alert*** Pathological tau alters head direction signaling and induces spatial disorientation by Shan Jiang* & Sara Hijazi*, Barbara Sarkany, Verena G Gautsch, Patrick A Lachance, Michael E Hasselmo, David Bannerman, and Tim J Viney

October 2024

• Tim visited Prof Limei Zhang and Dr Vito Hernandez at the Laboratory of Systems Neuroscience, Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City in relation to a CONAHCYT collaborative project. He also gave a special lecture, hosted by Prof Andres Castell, on neural circuit mechanisms of spatial disorientation.

September 2024

• This month we start our new MRC-funded project, "Defining neural circuit mechanisms for disorientation in preclinical Alzheimer's disease"
  
• Congratulations to Aditi for a great result for her dissertation and completing the MSc Pharmacology degree!

July 2024

• Fellowship success for Blaschko Fellow: Dr Sara Hijazi

  Congratulations to Dr Sara Hijazi, the Department's current Blaschko Fellow, who has been awarded an MCSA Postdoctoral Fellowship for her proposal entitled: Defining how GABAergic inhibition coordinates the firing and tuning of head direction cell types across the anterodorsal nucleus of the thalamus. 

  The overarching goal of this proposal is to define the role of GABAergic inhibition in shaping the firing patterns of head direction cells in the thalamus, which are important for spatial navigation and memory. 

  “I would like to acknowledge the Department's support in facilitating my application,” said Sara. “I am very grateful for the Blaschko Fellowship, funded by the Department in collaboration with Linacre College, that allowed me to obtain preliminary data for this application. More importantly, the Blaschko Fellowship gave me the opportunity to explore and make new observations which were instrumental in writing the MCSA proposal. This would have not been possible without the excellent support from my mentor Dr Tim Viney and the very encouraging and nurturing environment in the Viney group. I am really looking forward to start working on this project and I am really glad I will be able to extend my stay in the Department of Pharmacology for another 2 years.”

June 2024

• New publication! We are delighted to announce that Barbara's paper, "Early and selective localization of tau filaments to glutamatergic subcellular domains within the human anterodorsal thalamus" is now published in Acta Neuropathologica. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-024-02749-3
• Tim gave an invited talk, entitled 'Vulnerability of neural encoding head direction in preclinical Alzheimer's disease', at a symposium on 'Astrocytes in Brain Function and Disease' at the Nobel Forum, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. Programme can be found here: https://news.ki.se/calendar/symposium-astrocytes-in-brain-function-and-disease

May 2024

• The Viney Group were pleased to host Professor Michael Hasselmo, from Boston University, USA, who visited us and participated in our workshop on 'Mechanisms of Spatial Disorientation'. He also gave a talk at Cortex Club, entitled 'Egocentric and Allocentric Representations in Cortical Structures'

April 2024

• We are delighted to announce that the lab will receive major funding from the MRC to pursue a project on spatial disorientation in preclinical Alzheimer's disease. Further details will be announced later.
• At the start of Trinity Term we welcome Aditi, who will investigate neuroinflammation in relation to tau pathology, and Mara, who will investigate cell types of the anterior thalamus

March 2024

• Tim delivered an invited presentation at the Tau2024 Global Conference in Washington DC, attended by more than 1,200 researchers. His talk, Vulnerability of subcortical presynaptic terminals to tau pathology, focused on mechanisms underlying selective circuit vulnerability in neurodegenerative disease.

• Tim also gave a talk at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), MD, USA, and spent a couple of days interacting with various research groups.

October 2023

• Congratulations to Shan who was one of the 3 winners of the BRAINScapes Imaging Competition 2023. The prize was presented at the Autumn School for Cognitive Neuroscience

September 2023

• Shan was selected to attend the 'Advanced tools for data analysis in Neuroscience' summer school in Strasbourg

June 2023

• ***New preprint alert*** Pathway-specific progression of Tau pathology in the human thalamus

May 2023

• "Wegovy and Ozempic: could the new weight-loss drug also treat dementia?" Tim and Barbara write for The Conversation. Also featured on 'Science Alert'. UPDATE: This article had more than 100,000 reads within the first month of being posted

April 2023

• A warm welcome to Katy and Natalia who start their projects on the mouse and human thalamus in Trinity term!
• Tim, Shan and Barbara attended EuroTau in Lille to find out about the latest research on Tau biology. Barbara's poster was selected from over 120 posters to give one of five 'flash talks' to promote the research

February 2023

• Tim gave an invited talk at the NeuroWire Virtual Club, entitled "Spread of pathological Tau within memory circuits of the mouse and human brain" https://www.neurowire.ca/invited-speakers-2023/

December 2022

• We are delighted to welcome Dr Sara Hijazi, who joins us as the Department's new Blaschko Fellow. Sara worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the group of Professor Steven Kushner at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam after completing her PhD at VU University in Amsterdam in 2020

November 2022

• 15/11/2022 Our paper entitled "Spread of pathological human Tau from neurons to oligodendrocytes and loss of high-firing pyramidal neurons in aging mice" has been published in Cell Reports today! https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(22)01517-0

October 2022 

• We are pleased to welcome Shan Jiang to the group as a new DPhil student. She will be investigating circuits of the anterior thalamus, and will initially be learning in vivo extracellular recordings and juxtacellular labelling

August 2022 

• Barbara's winning image from the Alzheimer's Society 'Spotlight on Dementia' photography competition is featured in the BBC Science Focus Magazine
  
• Tim gave an invited talk ("Neuropeptides and rhythmic neuronal firing in brain networks") at RegPep24 in Stirling, Scotland

July 2022 

• Tim and Barbara attended FENS Forum in Paris, the first in-person meeting since January 2020. Barbara presented a poster entitled "Accumulation and neuron-to-glia spread of human Tau proteins in ageing mice", which received very good attendance on the last day of the meeting
• Congratulations to Victoria for passing her FHS research project on "Effects of folate deficiency on spatial memory and Tau phosphorylation"

May 2022

• Welcome to Verena who starts her MSc Pharmacology research project in the lab this month

April 2022

• We welcome Dalya to the lab who will work on the human thalamus for her 8 week FHS project
• Tim gives an invited talk at the 39th Congress of International Union of Physiological Sciences in Beijing (which became a virtual meeting). The talk was entitled "Contribution of neuropeptide-expressing neuronal cell types to spatial memory processes" and was part of symposium on neuropeptides ("Uncovering peptides' role in brain function: from synaptic structure to oscillations and behaviour")

November 2021 

• New preprint! "Consequences of human Tau aggregation in the hippocampal formation of ageing mice in vivo" https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.11.24.469849