Megan Carey
Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown
Cerebellar Circuit Contributions to Locomotor Coordination in Mice
Friday 30 January 2015
Location: Oxford Martin School, Old Indian Institute, 34 Broad Street, Oxford
Abstract: Even the simplest actions require movements across the body to be precisely coordinated in space and time. The cerebellum contributes to coordinated movement in vertebrates, but the specific neural mechanisms through which it supports whole-body coordination are poorly understood. We have developed a novel quantitative framework for measuring and analyzing locomotor coordination in mice. We are using it in combination with genetic tools to investigate neural circuit mechanisms responsible for the generation of learned and coordinated locomotor patterns.
Biography: Megan Carey received a PhD in Neuroscience from UCSF, where she worked with Steve Lisberger, and was a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with Wade Regehr at Harvard Medical School. She started her lab at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme in 2011. Dr. Carey is an International Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the recipient of a Starting Grant from the European Research Council.