«It has been very gratifying to me to use our imaging techniques developed to
diagnose human brain disorders to better understand the biological basis for anxiety / compulsive disorders in dogs, which may lead to better treatments for dogs and humans with these disorders,» said Marc J. Kaufman, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the McLean Hospital Translational Imaging Laboratory.
The test tube finding, reported in the current Cell, could help explain the formation of prions — the tangled proteins that are implicated in mad cow disease and
several human brain disorders — and eventually may lead to a way to smooth out these rogue proteins.
Selected neurons can then be turned on or off with the flick of a switch, but this requires implanting fibre - optic cables in the brain, which is impractical for
treating human brain disorders.
Dr. Zhu said he believes the study provides the scientific community with an important animal model to further investigate ARID1B's role
in human brain disorders and will be a useful tool for therapeutic testing of potential treatments for autism, intellectual disability, and Coffin - Siris syndrome.
These results are the first implication that Lef1 functions in the hypothalamus to mediate behavior, knowledge that could prove useful for diagnosing and treating
human brain disorders.
But this requires fibre optic cables to be implanted in the brain, which is impractical for treating
human brain disorders.
The teams will be tasked with developing a unique proposal for designing a new translational approach to a major global challenge in
human brain disorders.
Developing zebrafish models of complex phenotypes relevant to
human brain disorders.