Anthony Downs, Ph.D.

Research Assistant Professor
Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies
Department of Pharmacology

Office | 3019 Thurston-Bowles Bldg, CB #7178
Email | anthony_downs@med.unc.edu
Lab Website | McElligott Lab

Biosketch | Downs Biosketch

Research Interests

Dr. Downs’s broad research interest is to understand the neurobiology that contributes to opioid use disorder. One of his areas of interest is how repeated patterns of opioid consumption and withdrawal contribute to protracted negative affective states that last for long periods into abstinence from opioids. This has particularly relevance to opioid use disorder in the clinic, because these long-term affective changes following protracted withdrawal are thought to drive relapse to opioids. Mechanistically, this work examines adaptations in excitatory and inhibitory signaling in the basolateral amygdala and central noradrenergic nuclei to understand how neuroplasticity in these regions contributes to affective state changes during opioid withdrawal. Another area of focus is to identify how changes to the locus coeruleus contribute to non-cognitive and cognitive symptoms in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease and Frontotemporal Dementia. The locus coeruleus is the largest noradrenergic nucleus in the brain and is an early site of tau pathology in neurodegenerative diseases. Understanding how locus coeruleus function changes throughout the course of disease progression will be important for understanding both cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of these diseases.

Recent Publications – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/anthony.downs.1/bibliography/public/