We study

We take a multi-disciplinary approach to study
the development of cerebellar function in health and disease.

Maturation of neural signals:
We are funded by NINDS to study how abnormal maturation of cerebellar signals causes early onset dystonia, a movement disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions.

Segregation in parallel pathways:
We are curious how different cerebellar pathways contribute to the development of cerebellar-dependent motor and non-motor behaviors. This project builds on previous work showing that glutamatergic neurons are differentially important for development of social and motor behaviors. This work has implications to understanding why developmental insults to the cerebellum can cause neurodevelopmental disorders like autism spectrum disorders or motor impairments in infants.

Propagation of neural signals:
We want to understand how disease signals in the cerebellum propagate through different nodes in the circuit to cause disease. Most developmental cerebellar disorders are caused by abnormal signals in Purkinje cells. Knowing how this changes downstream neural signals will provide insight in how to correct disease signals and why different disease signals can cause different behavioral impairments. This project is funded through the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation.

Our work is supported by: