Exploring Striatal Interneurons: Implications for Perseverative Behaviors and Tourette's Syndrome

My primary research interest lies in understanding the role of postnatal interneuron maturation in relation to the development of psychiatric disorders. Cortical GABAergic circuits are highly immature at birth and develop slowly and incrementally through adolescence. Because refinement of excitatory circuits relies on inhibition mediated by GABA, disturbing GABAergic network development could lead to a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders, including schizophrenia. My long term goal is to elucidate the postnatal developmental abnormalities that confer increased susceptibility to develop psychiatric disorders when entering into adult life. I expect to elucidate the contribution of GABAergic corticolimbic circuits to maturation of excitatory networks and why dysregulation of corticolimbic interneurons may increase susceptibility to psychiatric disorders. My experimental approach combines new developed conditional and cell-type specific transgenic mouse lines with in vivo electrophysiological recordings to analyze the impact of disrupting GABAergic refinement through early stages of postnatal development.