Officers
IBAGS Council:
John Reynolds initially had careers in medical electronics and then clinical Medicine and then completed a PhD in Neuroscience at University of Otago. His focus is in vivo approaches to brain disorders, learning models and circuit connectivity using electrophysiological recording methods and behavioural analyses. His interests have been in synaptic plasticity recorded in single neurons in the basal ganglia and in the role of dopamine and acetylcholine in the whole animal. He has recently extended this work to translational approaches to Parkinson’s disease in rodent and sheep models and is developing advanced neurostimulation and drug delivery approaches for progressive translation to humans.
Louise Parr-Brownlie (Ngāti Maniapoto me Te Arawa) was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in the United States before joining the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago in 2010. Louise is a neurophysiologist investigating how neuronal activity in the basal ganglia, motor thalamus and motor cortex controls movement, and characterising changes associated with Parkinson’s disease. Recently, she has investigated the utility of optogenetic stimulation applied to the motor thalamus to recover movements in parkinsonian models. Louise has also worked with bioengineers to develop an implantable light-based device for continuous brain stimulation over 6 months, which is commercially available.
Our research program at Emory University aims at elucidating the neuroplasticity of cortical and subcortical brain circuits associated with the development of parkinsonism in nonhuman primate models of Parkinson’s disease.
Raffaella Tonini leads the Neuromodulation of Cortical and Subcortical Circuits Lab, at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Italy. Her research goal is to understand how the brain learns to cope with an ever-changing environment and to choose between different behavioral options. Within this context, her research team focuses on the role of neuromodulatory substances in shaping micro- and macro circuit interactions to ultimately report selective perceptual and motivational information over multiple timescales.
In my lab at Karolinska Institute we study molecular and signal transduction mechanisms underlying neurotransmission in the basal ganglia. During the last two decades we identified key molecular events involved in the effects of various classes of drugs, including addictive substances and antipsychotic medications. We are also studying signal transduction abnormalities linked to motor and psychiatric complications caused by prolonged administration of antiparkinsonian drugs. More recently, we developed models of Parkinson’s disease to study the molecular and network alterations at the basis of non-motor symptoms, which include cognitive and affective disorders.
Paola Bonsi is a researcher at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Plasticity, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation. She received a Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology from Sapienza, Università di Roma, in 1997. She was a post-doc in pharmacology and toxicology at Istituto Superiore di Sanità (1997–1998) and a post-doc in neurophysiology at IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation (2001–2005). Her research is focused on the pathophysiology of developmental and movement disorders involving the corticostriatal circuits of the brain, in particular Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, and autism spectrum disorders.
I am a Professor of Experimental Medical Research at Lund University. After studying Medicine and Neurology in Italy, I moved to Sweden to pursue basic and translational research on basal ganglia disorders (particularly on Parkinson’s disease). To this end, our group developed rodent models reproducing key features of human movement disorders and used these models to uncover basic disease mechanisms and therapeutic targets. I have commissions of trust at several national and international organisations that support translational research on Parkinson’s disease and related disorders.
Satomi Chiken is an assistant professor at National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Okazaki, Japan. She aims to elucidate the pathophysiology of movement disorders (MD), including Parkinson’s disease (PD). To achieve this goal, she studies neuronal activity changes in the basal ganglia associated with PD and MD using rodent and non-human primate models. She is also interested in the therapeutic mechanisms of deep brain stimulation and the development of more effective and safer treatments for PD and MD.
I am a Scientific Advisor at MIT with a background in the molecular and anatomical bases of basal ganglia function and dysfunction. My areas of focus, with an eye to public outreach, now include basal ganglia disorders, addiction, brain-body interactions and neurotechnology.
Jonathan Rubin, University of Pittsburgh, works on theoretical and applied problems coming from neuroscience, as well as on parameter estimation, inflammation, and other problems in mathematical biology in collaboration with students, postdocs, and medical school faculty. In the neuroscience area, Dr. Rubin’s research focuses on rhythmic activity patterns and control in respiratory and locomotor networks, pathological dynamics and therapeutic interventions for movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, neuronal dynamics associated with decision-making, propagation of activity on graphs, and bursting and other multiple timescale activity patterns. Many of his projects fall into the general theme of spatio-temporal pattern formation in networks of coupled neurons or other interacting units.
My laboratory focuses on understanding dopamine neurotransmission in the brain, particularly within the basal ganglia. We seek to improve understanding of the mechanisms regulating dopamine transmission and their dysfunction in neurodegenerative and other brain disorders, particularly Parkinson’s disease and addictions, to gain insights into disease aetiology and therapeutic avenues. We are a founding group of the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre (OPDC).
I am a Physiology Full Professor af the Department of Physiology at Dental School of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo since 2013. My interest is in unveiling new mechanisms involved in the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative and mental disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. We for example have shown that cannabinoid system abnormalities could be associated with sensorimotor gating deficits observed in schizophrenic patients and that the nitric oxide synthase inhibitors (iNOS) and the antibiotic doxycycline prevents degeneration of dopamine neurons.
Our lab at Hebrew University studies cellular and network physiology of basal gangalia and brain stem circuits in rodent models of movement disorders, with an emphasis in recent years on the pathophysiology of prodromal symptoms of PD, and neuromodulator dynamics in the striatum. We combine slice electrophysiology in conjunction with multphoton imaging and optogenetics, endoscopic imaging and mathematical modeling.
Dr. Christelle Baunez, is Directrice de Recherche at the CNRS, leader of the team ‘Basal Ganglia, Motivation and Reward’ (BAGAMORE) at the Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone (INT) in Marseille (France). During her PhD thesis in Marseille on behavioral studies of pharmacological interactions between glutamate and dopamine within the basal ganglia, she started to be interested in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) as a possible target for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. During her post-doctoral internship at Cambridge University (UK) (supervised by Prof. T.W. Robbins), she focused on the involvement of the STN in non-motor functions. She revealed the involvement of STN in attention and control of inhibition. She got her permanent position at the CNRS in 1997 and pursued her research on the functions of the STN, developing deep brain stimulation in behaving rats. One of her major finding, published in Nature Neuroscience in 2005 and PNAS in 2010, was to show that STN lesion or DBS reduces motivation for cocaine, while increasing motivation for food, suggesting that STN DBS could be applied to treat addiction. The research in her team extends to non-human primate and parkinsonian patients and is mainly focused on motivation.
She has published 69 articles in international journals and 8 book chapters. She has been invited to present her work at 102 international (71) and national (31) symposia. She has co-organized international meetings and symposia in international meetings. She has been awarded various international and national fundings and prizes. She has recently served as president of the scientific council of the Institute for Life sciences at the CNRS. She is Principal Editor for Psychopharmacology. She is member of the board of various international societies (EBPS, EWCBR, IBAGS) and is currently president of the scientific council of France Parkinson Association. She is very active at teaching and mentoring students at various levels. Has been part of many boards of grant reviews and PhD committees.
After completion of her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at UCM (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), Ledia received a Fulbright grant to pursue postdoctoral training in Ann Graybiel´s Lab at MIT, where she studied the role of striatal dopamine in learning and habitual behaviour. As an investigator in Spain, her research is focused on Parkinson’s Disease. She is currently testing a novel hypothesis for what might cause this disease: the continuous engagement of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) in habitual behaviour as a significant stressor for this vulnerable neuronal group (Hernandez et al, TINS, 2019). She has received European (Marie Slodowska-Curie grant) and national funding to pursue her research.
Toward a deeper understanding of the role of each striatal pathway in movement control and levodopa induced dyskinesias (LIDs), Ledia recently developed a new animal model using optogenetics to evoke “optodyskinesias” in normal and dopamine depleted states. Currently, she is developing strategies to prevent LIDs and deepen the knowledge behind the selective and early onset loss of dopaminergic neurons in the SNc.
I am a Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University. My research focuses on understanding the cellular and circuit principles that govern striatal function, with a particular focus on how interneuron diversity shapes information processing and behaviour. We have identified and characterised novel striatal interneuron populations, uncovered their hierarchical connectivity, and revealed how they integrate specific cortical, thalamic and brainstem inputs. This work has helped reshape the classical view of the striatum positioning it as a complex and highly organised microcircuit. I use advanced electrophysiological, anatomical, and imaging approaches to map these networks with high temporal and cellular precision. More recently, my work has linked these microcircuits to behavioural processes including goal-directed learning and cognitive flexibility, establishing cholinergic interneurons as key regulators of striatal computations. Beyond my own research, I am committed to fostering collaborative science, sharing tools and expertise, and supporting the next generation of researchers.
I am a clinician scientist (MD) at the Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation Unit at Charité Berlin. I have built an expertise in movement disorders, neurophysiology and deep brain stimulation. My strengths are the implementation of methods for multimodal and multidimensional data analysis for clinical neuroscience applications. My current work combines computational modelling, machine and deep learning, structural and functional connectomics (fMRI), invasive (LFP/ECoG) and non-invasive (EEG/MEG) neurophysiology, to develop the next-generation of intelligent clinical brain computer interfaces for patients with movement disorders.
I am a tenured researcher at INSERM (National institute of Health and medical research) and senior investigator at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre (France). After studying neuroscience in France, Canada and the United States, I returned to France to study pathologies related to basal ganglia dysfunction. My research focuses primarily on the pathophysiology of motor and non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, combining a preclinical approach in animals with a clinical approach in patients.
Nathalie Dehorter obtained a PhD in Neuroscience in 2010 in Marseille, France and worked as EMBO Research Fellow at the CSIC in Alicante, Spain and the MRC, King’s College of London, UK. In 2017, she started her research group at The Australian National University (ANU) to investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the development and adaptation of interneurons in the brain, in health and disease. For her research, she uses multi-disciplinary approaches, from molecular biology to electrophysiology and behaviour. She currently leads the Neuronal Development Laboratory at the Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, and The Eccles Institute of Neuroscience, ANU. She is a NHMRC research grant fellow and an ANU Future Scheme awardee.
