Andre Sousa, PhD

Assistant Professor

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Talk Title: Multimodal analyses of prefrontal cortical development, evolution, and disease

Abstract: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is an evolutionarily derived cortical area in primates critical for high-level cognitive functions and implicated in various neurodevelopment disorders. The cells that compose the dlPFC, especially excitatory and inhibitory neurons, undergo extensive maturation throughout midfetal and late-fetal development, during which critical neurodevelopmental events, such as circuit assembly and electrophysiological maturation of neurons, occur. Despite the relevance of neuronal maturation in several neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, the molecular mechanisms underlying this process remain largely unknown.

In this seminar, I will discuss some of our recent studies that focused on identifying human-specific features of dlPFC structure and  development, novel regulators of neuronal maturation during a critical period of dlPFC development in primates, and the molecular and cellular mechanisms that are disrupted in Down syndrome during early postnatal dlPFC development.

Host: Dr. Joe Dougherty