Stephanie Rudolph
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Neuroscience
The cerebellum, a brain structure at the back of the head, fine-tunes movement and also helps shape thinking and emotion. It must adjust its processing to the body's state and the situation.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
- Topics
cerebellum
oxytocin
neuropeptides
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Determine the types and distribution of oxytocin-binding receptors across the mouse cerebellar cortex, and test how oxytocin affects neuron activity and the transmission of signals between neurons.
- Identify the circuit mechanisms by which oxytocin strongly excites the network of Golgi cells, the inhibitory interneurons that control granule cell excitability in the cerebellar input layer.
- Test how oxytocin changes cerebellar cortical oscillations and the output of Purkinje cells, the cerebellum's output neurons, in awake behaving mice.
More about the research
Slow-acting chemical messengers called neuropeptides may drive these adjustments. Large gene-activity surveys have found many neuropeptide receptors in the mouse cerebellum, including receptors for oxytocin, a hormone linked to social behavior. This project asks whether the cerebellum belongs to the brain networks that respond to oxytocin and support social behavior.
Why it matters
Many neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and neurological disorders affect both social communication and movement. Learning how oxytocin changes cerebellar output may help explain the link between these two kinds of symptoms. It could also eventually inform research on these conditions, although the grant describes only basic research on circuit mechanisms.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Indira M Raman
Northwestern University, IL·Neuroscience
Determine how the synchrony of inhibitory input from many Purkinje neurons shapes the firing of cerebellar nuclei neurons, using in vitro synaptic studies in mice and larval zebrafish.
Suhasa Kodandaramaiah
University of Minnesota, MN·Biomedical Engineering
Design and build a miniaturized micro-camera array microscope (MCAM) that fits a clear polymer skull implant and images 24 mm² of cerebellar cortex at cellular resolution, refined in head-fixed mice.
Mesut Sahin
New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJ·Biomedical Engineering
Develop focused ultrasound protocols that directly stimulate the deep cerebellar nuclei, the cerebellum's output centers, without surgery, and identify settings that selectively activate specific neuron types.
The school
Albert Einstein College of Medicine: 21 labs on PI Pages, $361M a year on research, 36 research doctorates a year.
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