Tag: cerebellum

SFARI is pleased to announce that it has awarded 32 grants (19 Pilot Awards and 13 Research Awards) in response to the 2017 Pilot and Research Awards request for applications (RFA).

A selection of presentations that will be given by past and current SFARI Investigators at Neuroscience 2017 in Washington, D.C., (November 11–15) is highlighted.

Tsai will delineate contributions of cerebellar dysfunction to autism-related behaviors in mice and assess benefits of cerebellar neuromodulation to treat these behaviors.

SFARI Investigator Liqun Luo discusses the neurodevelopmental disorder Smith-Magenis syndrome and his lab’s efforts to understand its underlying biology.

Research into the developmental underpinnings of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is hampered by a lack of techniques for describing neural development at the cellular and circuit levels. Ethan Scott and his colleagues plan to use zebrafish as a platform for anatomical and functional analyses of ASD etiology at the level of individual neurons and the circuits that they form. Zebrafish larvae are transparent, allowing neural development in the intact animal to be examined with a range of microscopic and optogenetic techniques.

Anatomical and electrophysiological studies have made it clear that dysfunction in the cerebellum, and in Purkinje cells specifically, is linked to behavioral abnormalities in autism. This correlation is compelling, but it has been difficult to make a causative link between the anatomical and physiological defects and the associated behaviors.