James (Jimmy) Dooley is assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. His graduate research focused on the evolution of sensorimotor circuits in mammals, while his postdoctoral work examined these circuits from a developmental perspective. In 2022, he established his laboratory at Purdue to study how sleep—particularly rapid eye movement (REM) sleep—affects sensorimotor development across the lifespan. Using infant rats, the Dooley lab combines several approaches, including in vivo electrophysiology, optogenetic manipulations and specialized behavioral methods developed in-house to explore how sleep shapes motor-circuit development and plasticity.

Dooley’s lab recently discovered that functional connectivity between the primary motor cortex and the red nucleus—a midbrain motor structure—differs across sleep and wake, revealing a previously unknown mechanism likely crucial for the development of cortical motor control. With support from his SFARI grant, Dooley’s team is now examining this circuit in infant rats lacking the Fmr1 gene, a widely used model for fragile X syndrome and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They hypothesize that these animals will exhibit disrupted sleep patterns and atypical sensorimotor activity during infancy. The lab’s long-term objective is to deepen our understanding of sleep’s critical role in both typical and atypical sensorimotor development, thereby contributing important insights to the broader autism research community. By establishing clear links between disrupted sleep and sensorimotor impairments in ASD, this work has the potential to identify new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for early intervention.