This month’s featured researcher is Dr. Gerald Downes, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology. His lab uses zebrafish to understand how genes and neural networks in the brain and spinal cord control movement. They are also studying mechanisms that contribute to epilepsy with the hope of developing new therapeutics to treat these disorders. He and his PhD students are authors on a paper titled, “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Associated Persistent Organic Pollutant cis-Chlordane Causes GABAA-Independent Toxicity to Motor Neurons, Providing Evidence toward an Environmental Component of Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis“, which appeared this month in Chemical Neuroscience. This work was a collaboration with researchers at Wesleyan University.
Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in December. They are just a fraction of the neuroscience research that occurs on campus. You can click on the PubMed ID to find the publication.
1: Kreyer AC, Wang LX. Collaborating neuroscience online: The case of the Human Brain Project forum. PLoS One. 2022 Dec 7;17(12):e0278402. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278402. PMID: 36477663.
2: Moorman DE, Aston-Jones G. Prelimbic and infralimbic medial prefrontal cortex neuron activity signals cocaine seeking variables across multiple timescales. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2022 Dec 5. doi: 10.1007/s00213-022-06287-2. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36464693.
3: Holec SAM, Lee J, Oehler A, Batia L, Wiggins-Gamble A, Lau J, Ooi FK, Merz GE, Wang M, Mordes DA, Olson SH, Woerman AL. The E46K mutation modulates ?-synuclein prion replication in transgenic mice. PLoS Pathog. 2022 Dec 1;18(12):e1010956. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010956. PMID: 36454879.
4: Sato SD, Hiroi Y, Zoppo D, Buonaccorsi J, Miehm JD, van Emmerik REA. Spatiotemporal gait changes in people with multiple sclerosis with different disease progression subtypes. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon). 2022 Dec;100:105818. doi: 10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2022.105818. Epub 2022 Nov 12. PMID: 36435079.
5: Zietz S, Cheng E, Lansford JE, Deater-Deckard K, Di Giunta L, Dodge KA, Gurdal S, Liu Q, Long Q, Oburu P, Pastorelli C, Skinner AT, Sorbring E, Steinberg L, Tapanya S, Tirado LMU, Yotanyamaneewong S, Alampay LP, Al-Hassan SM, Bacchini D, Chang L, Bornstein MH. Positive parenting, adolescent adjustment, and quality of adolescent diet in nine countries. J Adolesc. 2022 Dec;94(8):1130-1141. doi: 10.1002/jad.12089. Epub 2022 Sep 6. PMID: 36067124; PMCID: PMC9742303.
6: Kulick D, Moon E, Riffe RM, Teicher G, Van Deursen S, Berson A, He W, Aaron G, Downes GB, Devoto S, O’Neil A. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Associated Persistent Organic Pollutant cis-Chlordane Causes GABAA-Independent Toxicity to Motor Neurons, Providing Evidence toward an Environmental Component of Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. ACS Chem Neurosci. 2022 Dec 21;13(24):3567-3577. doi: 10.1021/acschemneuro.2c00452. Epub 2022 Dec 13. PMID: 36511510.
7: Savitz J, Ford BN, Yeh HW, Akeman E, Cosgrove K, Clausen AN, Martell C, Kirlic N, Santiago J, Teague TK, Irwin MR, Paulus MP, Aupperle RL. Behavioral activation therapy for depression is associated with a reduction in the concentration of circulating quinolinic acid. Psychol Med. 2022 Oct;52(13):2500-2509. doi: 10.1017/S0033291720004389. Epub 2020 Nov 25. PMID: 33234171; PMCID: PMC8144244.
8: Rothenberg WA, Sorbring E, Lansford JE, Peña Alampay L, Al-Hassan SM, Bacchini D, Bornstein MH, Chang L, Deater-Deckard K, Giunta LD, Dodge KA, Gurdal S, Liu Q, Long Q, Oburu P, Pastorelli C, Skinner AT, Tapanya S, Steinberg L, Maria Uribe Tirado L, Yotanyamaneewong S. Predicting child aggression: The role of parent and child endorsement of reactive aggression across 13 cultural groups in 9 nations. Aggress Behav. 2022 Dec 24. doi: 10.1002/ab.22067. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36565473.
9: Barnaby, W., Dorman Barclay, H. E., Nagarkar, A., Perkins, M., Teicher, G., Trapani, J. G., & Downes, G. B. (2022). GABAA ? subunit control of hyperactive behavior in developing zebrafish. Genetics, 220(4), iyac011. https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyac011. PMID: 35106556.