Sarah Ackerman, PhD

Assistant Professor

Pathology and Immunology, Division of Neuropathology,

Washington University School of Medicine

Talk title: Astrocyte regulation of neuronal plasticity, from genes to circuits.

Abstract: Experience drives structural and functional remodeling of neuronal circuits in the brain during discrete developmental windows called critical periods, after which circuits stabilize. Critical periods are thought to drive perduring changes in neural circuit function, and consequently, changes in the timing or expression of critical periods are linked to broad neurodevelopmental disorders. This talk will explore the consequences of critical period plasticity at genomic and circuit scale, and the extrinsic mechanisms that drive timely critical period closure to stabilize circuit function.

Host: Dr. Susan Dutcher

Host comments: Dr. Sarah Ackerman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University. She is a graduate of Wash U where she worked with Dr. Kelly Monk in the Department of Developmental Biology on myelination using Zebrafish. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Chris Doe (following the footsteps of our own Jim Skeath) at the University of Oregon working on neural circuit plasticity.

She was awarded a number of prizes as a graduate student that include the Phillip Needleman Pharmacology Prize, the O’Leary Prize for Excellence in Neuroscience, and the Spenser T. and Ann W. Olin Medical Science Fellow. She has continued to gain awards as an Assistant Professor that include the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award, the BBRF NARSAD Young Investigator Award, and the Pershing Square Foundation MIND Prize.

She returned to Wash U as the inaugural hire into the newly-opened Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG) Center in 2022, where she uses both fly and fish models to uncover conserved mechanisms used by glia stabilize neural circuit function.