Texas Children's HospitalJul 3 2024 Patients and mouse models experience many kinds of abnormal movements when their cerebellum is damaged. They can have uncoordinated and unbalanced movements, called ataxia. They can have atypical positioning of body parts or uncontrolled movements because their muscles are working against each other, called dystonia. Or they can have disruptive shaky movements, called tremors.
"Brain cells communicate with each other through neural signals," co-first and co-corresponding author of the study, Dr. Meike van der Heijden said. "Those signals occur in specific patterns that represent a code for specific behaviors. Studying the code produced in the cerebellum gives us information about the animal's movements.
The researchers next mimicked the effects of these neural codes in healthy mice using optogenetics, an elegant approach that combines optical and genetic engineering techniques for precise regulation of biological functions in target cells. This technique allowed the researchers to shine a light on the cells in flashing patterns to alter the cells' activity pattern.
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