Kexin Yuan
Email: kexinyuan@tsinghua.edu.cn
Disciplinary Focus:
Interdisciplinary Research at the Interface of Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, and Translational Medicine
Research Directions:
Dedicated to cutting-edge interdisciplinary research at the intersection of brain science and disease mechanisms. Employ cross-disciplinary approaches including artificial intelligence to develop advanced technologies and methods. Utilize rodent and non-human primate models to advance basic research, diagnosis, and translation of innovative therapies for diseases. The achievements have been published as last corresponding author in journals including Cell (2025), Neuron (2023), and J Neurosci (2024), and invited to contribute an annual review to Annual Review of Neuroscience (2026). The original "glass-like" tissue clearing technique, VIVIT, was selected as one of the Top 10 Advances in Chinese Neuroscience for 2025, received the Gold Award at the 2025 International Invention Exhibition and the First Prize of the "Invention and Entrepreneurship Award – Project Award" from the China Association of Inventions in 2025, and has achieved technology transfer. The three-dimensional spatial multi-omics technology platform developed based on VIVIT has been successfully applied in pathological diagnosis and drug discovery.
Major Research Directions for the Next 5 Years:
1.The role and mechanisms of the brain's information hub — the thalamus — in biological intelligence
2.Precision neuromodulation based on the mechanisms of the thalamus as the brain's information hub
3.Applications of three-dimensional spatial multi-omics technology platforms in biomedical research
Representative Publications:
1.Meijie Li, KaMun Tan, Tehao Liu, Kexin Yuan*. How Salient Sensory Stimuli Induce Brain-Wide State Alterations. Annu Rev Neurosci. 2026 Mar 23. doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-112723-034728. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41871312.
2.Yixiao Gao, Fengyuan Xin, Tao Wang, Chengjun Shao, Ying Hu, Zhuoya Chen, Yiwei Wang, Fenghua Xie, Tianyu Li, Sijie Li, Liqun Ren, Caiqin Li, Xian Yang, Zhongjun Yang, Meijie Li, KaMun Tan, Tao Bai, Changwei Wei, Hanchuan Peng, Kai Li, Yichang Jia, Kexin Yuan*. VIVIT: Resolving trans-scale volumetric biological architectures via ionic glassy tissue. Cell. 2025 Oct 16;188(21):6079-6095.e20. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2025.07.023. Epub 2025 Aug 11. PMID: 40795853.
3.Mengting Liu; Yixiao Gao; Fengyuan Xin; Ying Hu; Tao Wang; Fenghua Xie; Chengjun Shao; Tianyu Li; Ningyu Wang*; Kexin Yuan* (2024). Parvalbumin and Somatostatin: Biomarkers for Two Parallel Tectothalamic Pathways in the Auditory Midbrain; the Journal of Neuroscience, March 6, 44(10): e1655232024.
4.Kai Li; Fenghua Xie; Hang Chen; Kexin Yuan*; Xiaolin Hu* (2024). An Audio-Visual Speech Separation Model Inspired by Cortico-Thalamo-Cortical Circuits. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 46(10):6637-6651.
5.Yiwei Wang; Ling You; KaMun Tan; Meijie Li; Jingshan Zou; Zhifeng Zhao; Wenxin Hu; Tianyu Li; Fenghua Xie; Caiqin Li; Ruizhi Yuan; Kai Ding; Lingwei Cao; Fengyuan Xin; Congping Shang; Miaomiao Liu; Yixiao Gao; Liqiang Wei; Zhiwei You; Xiaorong Gao; Wei Xiong; Peng Cao; Minmin Luo; Feng Chen; Kun Li; Jiamin Wu; Bo Hong*; Kexin Yuan* (2023). A common thalamic hub for general and defensive arousal control. Neuron, 111(20): 3270-3287.
