Dr. Mark Bevan: Dysregulation and rescue of subthalamic nucleus locomotor function in Huntington’s disease mice

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• Meeting ID: 91512 289258
• Passcode: 289258

In this seminar I will focus on our recent studies on the role of the subthalamic nucleus in motor control and its dysregulation in movement disorders.  We found that 1) subthalamic locomotor encoding and gait are highly dysregulated in Q175 Huntington’s disease (HD) mice 2) analogous gait deficits could be generated in wild type mice through optogenetic manipulation of subthalamic activity 3) subthalamic locomotor encoding and gait could be rescued in HD mice through suppression of subthalamic mutant huntingtin expression. Together, these findings argue that subthalamic activity normally optimizes movement, whereas dysregulated subthalamic activity contributes to gait deficits in HD and is a potential target for therapeutic intervention.