Dr Varun Sreenivasan
Emergence of behvaiours in early postnatal development
Active exploration by an animal of its surroundings is necessary for survival. However, this behaviour is absent at birth. This is largely because many circuits in the brain are still in nascent stages of development, and the proper assembly and maturation of neuronal circuits are critical steps before many complex behaviours can emerge. For example, babies only learn to walk after going through other intermediate motor stages such as crawling, cruising and standing.
In mice, active exploration can be quantified through the assessment of a specific behaviour called "whisking". Mice move their whiskers back-and-forth to touch objects. The whiskers act as touch sensors and provide the brain with tactile information regarding the mouse's immediate environment. However, newborn mice do not whisk and whisking behaviour only emerges around two weeks after birth. Importantly, we do not fully understand how neuronal circuits for whisking are assembled in the brain, and how perturbing their development will impact the emergence of this critical behaviour.
The overarching goal of this project will be to understand how specific whisking sensorimotor circuits are assembled after birth, and how this relates to the emergence of whisking. In addressing these questions, we will make use of cutting-edge neuroscience techniques including in-vivo whole cell and extracellular recordings, optogenetics, chemogenetics and viral tracing in gene-targeted mice.
For more information contact Dr. Varun Sreenivasan (V.Sreenivasan@sussex.ac.uk) or visit the lab website at https://www.sysneurodevlab.org/