Graduate Program Affiliations
- Neuroscience & Cognitive Science (NACS)
- BISI-Physiological Systems (PSYS)
Research Interests
Individual experience early in life refines the way each of us perceives the external world. The goal of the lab is to understand differences in how sensory experience influences the juvenile and adult mammalian brain. Pioneering work in the mammalian visual system taught us that experience-dependent synaptic plasticity declines with age. This loss constrains the ability of adult cortical circuits to recover from previous injuries or visual deficits, such as amblyopia (lazy eye). However, we have demonstrated that binocular visual deprivation through dark exposure, followed by light reintroduction (DE/LRx) reinstates plasticity in the adult visual cortex and promotes the recovery from amblyopia. We employ dense array electrophysiology, opto- and chemogenetics, morphomtery and visual psychophysics, for a mechanistic understanding of how synaptic plasticity is lost with age, and recovered by DE/LRx.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago
- Post-doc, University of Virginia
- Post-doc, Brown University
Select Publication PDFs
- Murase S, Liu J, Winkowski D, Kanold PO and Quinlan EM (2019) Homeostatic regulation of perisynaptic MMP9 activity in the amblyopic visual cortex. Elife; 8. pii: e52503. doi: 10.7554/eLife.52503. PMID:31868167. pdf
- Sengupta DC, Lantz CL, Rumi MAK, Quinlan EM (2019) 17α Estradiol promotes plasticity of spared inputs in the adult amblyopic visual cortex. Sci Rep. 9:19040. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-55158-y. PMID: 31836739. pdf
- Hensch TK, Quinlan EM. (2018) Critical periods in amblyopia.Vis Neurosci. 2018 doi: 10.1017/S0952523817000219. Review. pdf
- Bridi MCD, de Pasquale R, Lantz CL, Gu Y, Borrell A, Choi SY, He K, Tran T, Hong SZ, Dykman A, Lee HK, Quinlan EM, Kirkwood A. (2018). Two distinct mechanisms from experience-dependent homeostasis. Nat Neurosci. May 14. doi: 10.1038/s41593-018-0150-0. pdf
- Murase S, Lantz CL, Quinlan EM. (2017) Light reintroduction after dark exposure reactivates plasticity in adults via perisynaptic activation of MMP-9. Elife. 2017 Sep 6;6. pii: e27345. doi: 10.7554/eLife.27345. pdf
- Gu Y, Tran T, Murase S, Borrell A, Kirkwood A, Quinlan EM. (2016) Neuregulin-Dependent Regulation of Fast-Spiking Interneuron Excitability Controls the Timing of the Critical Period. J Neurosci. 2016 Oct 5;36(40):10285-10295. pdf
