About
Joana earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences, specializing in Neurosciences, through the Doctoral Program of the Academic Medical Center of Lisbon, Portugal. Her doctoral research focused on mapping the functional brain circuits involved in opioid reward-context associations. In 2022, she joined the HMJB team at IPMC as a postdoctoral researcher to investigate the role of midbrain circuits in anxiety regulation and defensive behaviors. Her work integrates optogenetics and fiber photometry combined with mouse behavior analysis.
Publications
2026
Ventral tegmental area circuits in defensive states: Emerging mechanisms of fear and anxiety,
Trends Neurosci. 2026 Jul 7:S0166-2236(26)00124-4. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2026.06.008..
2024
Mapping functional traces of opioid memories in the rat brain,
Brain Communications, 2024, ⟨10.1093/braincomms/fcae281⟩.
2019
Role of Spinal Cord α2-Adrenoreceptors in Noradrenergic Inhibition of Nociceptive Transmission During Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy.
Front Neurosci 2019; 13(): 1413.