We have a longstanding collaboration with University of Iowa neuroscientist Ted Abel to identify the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory. This research helps explain why some people learn more easily than others, and why some are more prone to age-related cognitive decline.

Reading activity from gene expression

When neurons are active, they switch on a characteristic set of genes. We built NEUROeSTIMator, a deep-learning model that estimates how active a neuron was from its gene expression alone, so that single-cell and spatial transcriptomic data can show which cells took part in a memory.

Genome integrity and neurodevelopment

Postdoctoral fellow Ben Kelvington studies how the genome's integrity is maintained during learning, and how failures of that maintenance contribute to the challenges associated with neurodevelopmental conditions.