Funded Projects

The purpose of this collaborative project is to study neuronal mechanisms associated with social stress. In particular we will test whether the energy producing systems, known as mitochondria, in a specific set of brain cells are important to confer resilience to stressful stimuli. This research may lead to treatments of stress and anxiety disorders. 

Our ability to detect and interpret sounds relies on specialized sensory cells within the snail-shaped hearing organ of the inner ear—the cochlea. These hair cells sense physical movement and then convert that mechanical stimulus into a biological signal that we perceive as sound. These mechano-sensory cells perform this task within microseconds and can do so for sub-nanomechanical stimuli.

My proposed visit to the Van De Ville lab is centered on the idea to expand our methods beyond brain tumors to other neurological diseases using the Van De Ville lab’s expertise in neuro-imaging. Imaging genomics has been focused mainly on oncology; however, other neurological diseases can be studied in the same way.

Brain data analyses involves many steps and every step is prone to errors and uncertainties. Ignoring uncertainties can potentially leading to overconfident conclusions. To improve reproducibility it is important to propagate errors throughout the anlaysis.

Humans naturally learn to generate and process complicated sequential patterns. For example, a concert pianist can learn an enormous repertoire of memorized music. In neuroscience, it is widely thought that synaptic plasticity – the process by which the connections between neurons change response to experience – underlies such remarkable behavior.

Human movement results from the coordination of muscles, tendons, joints, and other physiological elements.

Although you’re aware of the light that you see, light also affects us in ways that you might not appreciate. These so called “non-image forming” (NIF) pathways were recently discovered, they start in the human eye before projecting to over a dozen brain regions. They modulate aspects of human function including our daily rhythms, our sleep patterns, the way we feel and the way we think.

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease second only to malaria in its human health and economic impact on tropical nations.