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Michele A. Basso, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Departments of Physiology and Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences
Director and Primary Investigator
michele@physiology.wisc.edu
(608) 262-7110
I received my Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience working on the physiological underpinnings of a symptom exhibited by Parkinsonian patients: the glabellar tap sign. This symptom is very subtle and often appears before overt Parkinsonian symptoms, such as tremor, are evident. The glabellar tap sign is measured when a physician gently taps the forehead of patients and examines a blink reflex in response. In healthy humans and other animals, the blink reflex rapidly habituates in response to this gentle tap. In Parkinsonism, the reflex fails to habituate. My research demonstrated that this reflex abnormality seen in Parkinsonism resulted from faulty cooperation between voluntary and reflex motor systems - a job that is normally performed, in large part, by a set of subcortical forebrain nuclei called the basal ganglia.
My findings as a Ph.D. student led me to begin focusing my research on voluntary movement control and the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and other diseases of volitional movement involving the basal ganglia, such as Huntington's disease and dystonia.
After a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, I moved to Madison in 2000. Today, my laboratory focuses on understanding the role of the basal ganglia and the superior colliculus in the generation of voluntary movements of the eyes and the role that higher perceptual and cognitive processes play in the transformation of sensory information to produce voluntary movements. Our emphasis is on understanding normal brain mechanisms that control complex behaviors and how these mechanisms go awry in movement-disordered states.
To this end, we perform basic science experiments and we participate in clinical research with clinicians treating patients with movement disorders. We hold a strong belief that basic and clinical research benefit from each other and that the development of animal models in the laboratory that can be tested clinically will lead to better diagnostics and treatments of devastating human diseases.
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Safraaz Mahamed, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology
safraaz.mahamed@gmail.com
(608) 265-3396
I received my Ph.D. in Physiology under the supervision of James Duffin in 2004. I then moved to the University of Wisconsin to study neural plasticity in a rat model where I discovered a unique form of homeostatic synaptic plasticty in the spinal cord working with Grodon Mitchell. As of 2009, I've taken up residence in the Basso lab working on understanding how basal ganglia influence decsion making behavior. We've recently completed a review on basal ganglia and eye movements... so keep an eye out for it :)
Siddhartha Joshi, Ph.D.
Department of Physiology
siddha@physiology.wisc.edu
(608) 265-3396
My graduate work was in the field of early cortical processing of visual information. A large portion of the work in studying early visual processing is centered around understanding how attributes of a visual scene are encoded by individual neurons in visual cortex. My interests have evolved to asking how such visual information might be used and what aspects of this information are used under different conditions to guide motor behaviour, such as an eye-movement. To pursue these interests I joined Michele Basso's lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
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Byounghoon Kim, M.S.
Department of Physiology
kim@physiology.wisc.edu
(608) 265-3396
I am doing research on the Superior Colliculus as a gateway to understand the fundamental neuronal mechanism of higher brain cognitive function like the decision making process.
Corinne R. Vokoun, B.S.
Department of Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology
vokoun@wisc.edu
(608) 265-3396
Stuff that Corinne has done goes here... keep it short :)
Joel Shires, B.S.
Department of Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology
shires@wisc.edu
(608) 265-3396
My studies will focus on a nucleus of the basal ganglia, the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr). The primary symptoms of Parkinson's Disease are the result of decreased stimulation of the motor cortex by the basal ganglia, normally caused by the insufficient formation and action of dopamine, which is produced in the dopaminergic neurons of the SNr. For my research I will test the hypothesis that SNr influences the neuronal processing in SC toward the production of a saccade by recording SC neuronal activity while electrically manipulating the SNr.
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