Chandrashekhar Borkar
Assistant Professor
Biology
Neurobiology of emotions, behavioral analysis, defensive responses, aggression, mouse physiology
+91-20-25908743
cborkar@iiserpune.ac.in
Chandrashekhar Borkar, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at IISER Pune, where his lab (NeuroScape Lab) investigates the neural mechanisms underlying defensive behaviors, and escalated emotional states such as trauma-induced aggression in rodents. He earned his doctorate degree from RTM Nagpur University with Dr. Kokare, followed by postdoctoral training at Tulane University with Dr. Fadok, studying defensive scalability. Before joining IISER Pune in June 2026, he served as an Assistant Professor at Miami University, Ohio (USA).
Research
Neurobiology of Scalable, Affective and Pathological Emotional states
Dr. Borkar's lab (NeuroScape Lab) is working to understand neural mechanisms underlying emotion and stress related neurological disorders, by integrating cutting-edge techniques in behavioral neuroscience like optogenetics, chemogenetics, and neuroimaging.
1. Understanding how animals transition through defensive states — from freezing to flight to fight (aggression).
2. Identifying the neural mechanisms underlying the shift to exaggerated aggressive states following trauma.
Selected Publications
Borkar CD, Stelly CE, Fu X, Dorofeikova M, Le EQ, Vutukuri R, Vo C, Fadok JP et al. (2024). “Top-Down Control of Flight by a Non-Canonical Cortico-Amygdala Pathway”. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06912-w.
Borkar CD and Fadok JP. (2024). “Distributed Circuits Regulating Defensive State Transitions: Freezing, Flight and Fight”. Neuropsychopharmacology 2025;50:320-321.
Le, EQ, Hereford D, Borkar CD, Aldaco Z, Klar J, Resendez A, and Fadok JP (2024). “Contributions of Associative and Non-Associative Learning to the Dynamics of Defensive Ethograms”. eLife.90414.3.
Fu, Xin, Teboul E, Weiss GL, Antonoudiou P, Borkar CD, Fadok JP, Maguire J, Tasker JG (2022). “Gq Neuromodulation of BLA Parvalbumin Interneurons Induces Burst Firing and Mediates Fear-Associated Network and Behavioral State Transition in Mice”. Nature Communications 13 (1): 1290.
Borkar, CD, and Fadok JP. (2021). “A Novel Pavlovian Fear Conditioning Paradigm to Study Freezing and Flight Behavior”. JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments), no. 167: 61536.
Borkar CD, Dorofeikova M, Le EQ, Vutukuri R, Vo C, Hereford D, Resendez A, Basavanhalli S, Sifnugel N, Fadok JP. (2020). “Sex Differences in Behavioral Responses During a Conditioned Flight Paradigm”. Behavioural Brain Research 389: 112623.