A team of WashU Medicine researchers has discovered a promising new use for Prozac, which is the brand name of the antidepressant fluoxetine, in the treatment of children with rare forms of epilepsy. In a Frontiers of Pharmacology case report published earlier this year, the researchers describe how fluoxetine treatment of two siblings with developmental and epileptic encephalopathy […]
Valeria Cavalli, PhD, the Robert E. and Louise F. Dunn Professor of Biomedical Research in the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University, has received a grant of more than $400,000 to understand the origins of hypersensitivity in Fragile X syndrome (FXS). This genetic disorder, which accounts for the most cases of autism by a known […]
Jason Yi, PhD, an assistant professor of neuroscience, and Harrison Gabel, PhD, an associate professor of neuroscience, both at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, each have received two-year $300,000 pilot grants from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative. The researchers will use the funds to investigate genetic diseases that result in autism. […]
Martha Bagnall, PhD, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, received a $1.9 million R01 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to map neuronal connections in the zebrafish spinal cord. The Bagnall lab studies motor control […]
The National Institutes of General Medical Sciences has awarded an Outstanding Investigator Award of nearly $2 million to Paul Taghert, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine, to study how the circadian clock orchestrates multiple biological cycles that operate at different phases. Physiological and behavioral rhythms, such as sleep, hormone fluxes, and eating, […]
Sotos Syndrome and Tatton Brown Rahman Syndrome bear striking similarities, so much so that patients with one have been misdiagnosed as having the other. Both rare diseases cause large stature and head size, also known as overgrowth, distinct facial features, a high prevelance of autism, and intellectual disability. But the two diseases have different genetic […]
For animals such as mice, olfaction is their primary route to pick up social information, whether that’s identifying the dominant male in a group or figuring out the reproductive status of females. In turn, these signals can influence animals’ behavior and physiology. Pheromones in male urine, for instance, can trigger early puberty in mice. While […]