Dystonia is a movement disorder characterized by involuntary and repetitive co-contractions of the agonist and antagonist muscles. Dystonia 6 (DYT6) is an autosomal dominant dystonia caused by loss of function mutations in the zinc finger transcription factor THAP1. I have generated Thap1 knock-out mice with a view to understanding its...
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating injury, which can be caused by motor vehicle accidents, violence, and non-traumatic causes. These injuries can leave patients with lifelong paralysis, as well as incontinence and life threatening autonomic dysreflexia. There is currently no FDA approved treatment for SCI. Spinal injury disrupts the...
Individuals following a stroke suffer from a host of movement impairments that affect the upper extremity. Hand use is often significantly compromised, especially in individuals with more severe impairments, which makes it difficult for individuals to participate in activities of daily living. One of the major goals of rehabilitation is...
Rhythmic fluctuations of electrical activity in the brain provide insights into the proposed mechanism by which we encode experiences and then maintain, forget, modify, and retrieve them. Yet there is still much to learn about how neural oscillations relate to memory function. The purpose of this research is to discover...