Department of Neuroscience
Mentor: Alik Widge, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Project: Optogenetic Dissection of Striatal Deep Brain Stimulation
Ellie investigates the physiological mechanism by which deep brain stimulation (DBS) improves psychiatric illnesses. Colleagues in her lab previously developed a rat model of human ventral internal capsule/ventral striatum DBS by delivering high-frequency electrical stimulation to a particular area of the rat brain while they performed a task that engages cognitive control. Rats exhibit the same behavioral effects of DBS as do humans, which makes this a powerful animal model to use to figure out how DBS works. With this, Ellie is developing an optogenetic paradigm to deliver high-frequency light stimulation to specific, separate, neural components and figure out which ones drive DBS's behavioral effects. This work is important because we do not know how DBS works in humans, for example, if it acts on axons that make up the internal capsule or local cell bodies. With this knowledge, we could improve surgical targeting in DBS patients and improve therapeutic efficacy.
