The Official GitHub Page of Uri Monsonego The Third

My name is Uri Monsonego. I’m a PhD student in Neuroscience at the Weizmann Institute of Science, working in Ofer Yizhar’s lab.

I’m studying the “Neuronal Mechanisms Linking Stress, Anxiety, and Compulsive Behavior”, which sounds intense—and it is—but basically, I study why stressed brains sometimes decide that the best solution is to compulsively groom themselves into oblivion.

The core idea? When mammals (including us, yes you too) get anxious, the brain pulls out a trusty old trick: repetitive, body-focused behaviors—like grooming, nail-biting, or obsessively checking if you really sent that email. These actions might help reduce anxiety in the short term, but in compulsive disorders, they go from soothing to straight-up sabotaging.

To explore this, I work with mice (they’re cuter than you’d think), lasers (they’re cooler than you’d think), and complex behavioral paradigms (they’re… fine). I’m using optogenetics and other fancy tools to investigate how stress hijacks certain brain circuits and turns helpful behaviors into maladaptive loops.

In short: I stress out mice so you don’t have to - you’re welcome!

Ah, and I really don’t like programming. Like, at all.