Wim E. Crusio | |
---|---|
Wilhelmus Elisabeth Crusio | |
Born | |
Citizenship | Dutch |
Alma mater | Radboud University Nijmegen |
Known for | Behavioral neurogenetics of the hippocampus, mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders |
Awards | IBANGS Distinguished Service Award |
Scientific career | |
Fields | behavioral and neural genetics, behavioral neuroscience |
Institutions | Radboud University Nijmegen, University of Heidelberg, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS; Paris, Orleans, and Talence (Bordeaux)), University of Massachusetts Medical School |
Thesis | Olfaction and behavioral responses to novelty in mice: a quantitative-genetic analysis (1984) |
Doctoral advisor | Hans van Abeelen |
Other academic advisors | Bram van Overbeeke, Hendrik de Wit, Victor Westhoff |
Author abbrev. (botany) | Crusio |
Wim E. Crusio (born Wilhelmus Elisabeth Crusio on 20 December 1954) is a Dutch behavioral neurogeneticist and a directeur de recherche (research director) with the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Talence, France.
Crusio received his bachelor's degree in biology from Radboud University Nijmegen in 1975, where he went on to obtain a master's degree and then a PhD in 1979 and 1984, respectively. [1] His Anubias revision, which was originally published in 1979, [1] was translated in German [2] and continues to engender interest. [3] For his PhD thesis, Crusio studied the inheritance of the effects of anosmia on exploratory behavior of mice, and more in general the genetic architecture of exploratory behavior, using quantitative-genetic methods such as the diallel cross. [4] From 1984 to 1987, Crusio worked as a postdoc at the University of Heidelberg, supported by a NATO Science Fellowship [5] and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. [6] During 1988, Crusio spent a year in Paris, France, supported by a fellowship from the Fyssen Foundation. [7] He then returned to Heidelberg as a senior research scientist before being recruited as chargé de recherche by the CNRS, initially working in an institute of the Université René Descartes (Paris V) and later moving to the CNRS campus in Orléans, having been promoted to directeur de recherche. [5] In 2000 he became full professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts, returning to the CNRS in 2005 as a group leader in the Centre de Neurosciences Intégratives et Cognitives in Talence, a suburb of Bordeaux. [5] [8] [9] He is currently adjunct director of the Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Intégratives d'Aquitaine. [10]
Crusio and his collaborators found that neuroanatomical variations in the mouse hippocampus, in particular the sizes of their intra- and infrapyramidal mossy fibers (IIPMF) correlated with learning performance. [11] Together with Herbert Schwegler and Hans-Peter Lipp, Crusio showed that an inverse correlation, that is, animals with larger IIPMF learn better, could be found for spatial learning in a radial arm maze task. [12] [13] [14] Taken together, Crusio and collaborators think that it is highly likely that this correlation is causal, [15] although this is not universally accepted. [16]
When mice are exposed to unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS), they start exhibiting symptoms reminiscent of major depressive disorder in humans. [17] As it had been suggested that deficits in hippocampal neurogenesis might underlie depression, [18] Crusio and collaborators undertook a series of experiments investigating changes in behavior and neurogenesis in mice that had undergone UCMS. They showed dramatic changes in levels of aggression, [19] anxiety, [20] [21] depressive-like behaviors, [20] and learning, [22] with a concomitant drop in neurogenesis. [22] However, the results were strain- and sex-specific and there did not appear to be a clear-cut correlation between the different changes, so that they finally concluded that although their data do not disprove the idea that deficits in hippocampal neurogenesis solely underlie the behavioral impairments observed in human psychiatric disorders such as depression, they do not provide support for this hypothesis either. [22]
More recently, Crusio has been investigating the possibility that Fmr1 knockout mice might perhaps be used as a model for autism. This idea is based on the fact that patients suffering from the Fragile X syndrome, caused by a deficiency of the FMR1 gene often show autistic symptoms. A good mouse model for the Fragile X syndrome is available in the form of mice in which the Fmr1 gene (the mouse homologue of the human FMR1 gene) has been invalidated. [23] A review of the findings obtained with these mice in many different laboratories did indeed indicate that these animals display autistic-like symptoms, [24] especially changes in social behavior, a key symptom of autism. [25] [26]
Crusio is the founding editor-in-chief of Genes, Brain and Behavior , which he edited from 2001 to 2011. [27] The standards for the publication of mouse mutant studies that he and his co-editors developed for this journal [28] are gradually being accepted in the field. [29] [30] [31] Since 2017, Crusio is the editor-in-chief of Behavioral and Brain Functions [32] and since 2019 co-editor of Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology . [33] He is also an academic editor of PLoS ONE and served as associate editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1991–2008) and The Scientific World Journal (2002-2011). Crusio serves or has served on the editorial boards of Behavioral and Brain Functions, Behavior Genetics (1991–1995), Behavioural Brain Research (1997–2007), BMC Neuroscience , BMC Research Notes, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Journal of Visualized Experiments, Molecular Brain (2012-2017), Neurogenetics (1998–2006), Physiology and Behavior , and Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences . He edited special issues for the journals Behavior Genetics, [34] Behavioural Brain Research, [35] Physiology and Behavior (with Robert Gerlai), [36] Hippocampus (with Aryeh Routtenberg), [37] and Brain Research Bulletin (with Catherine Belzung and Robert Gerlai). [38] Together with Robert Gerlai he also edited a handbook on molecular genetic techniques for behavioral neuroscience. [39] [40] [41] Currently, he is editing the Cambridge Handbooks in Behavioral Genetics, a series of handbooks published by Cambridge University Press, [42] of which the first volume, Behavioral Genetics of the Mouse: Genetics of Behavioral Phenotypes, appeared in 2013. [43] [44] Since then, two more volumes have appeared. [45]
In 1996, Crusio was one of two co-founders of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society, [46] for which he served as member-at-large of the executive committee, treasurer, and president (1998–2001). [47] In 2011 he received from this society the "Distinguished Service Award", [48] which is given for exceptional contributions to the field of behavioral neurogenetics. [49] Crusio also served on the executive committees of the Behavior Genetics Association (from which he resigned in protest to Glayde Whitney's 1995 presidential address), [50] [51] the European Brain and Behaviour Society, [52] and the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, [53] and has been a President of the Dutch Behavior Genetics Contact Group. [54] He has been a member of several program committees for scientific meetings, most notably the 8th and 10th [55] World Congresses of Psychiatric Genetics and the 2008, 2009 (co-chair), 2010 (chair), and 2011 (chair) Annual Meetings of the IBNS. [56]
According to Google Scholar, Crusio's works have been cited over 10,000 times and he has an h-index of 46. [57] Some significant papers are:
Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a genetic disorder characterized by mild-to-moderate intellectual disability. The average IQ in males with FXS is under 55, while about two thirds of affected females are intellectually disabled. Physical features may include a long and narrow face, large ears, flexible fingers, and large testicles. About a third of those affected have features of autism such as problems with social interactions and delayed speech. Hyperactivity is common, and seizures occur in about 10%. Males are usually more affected than females.
The hippocampus is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory, and in spatial memory that enables navigation. The hippocampus is located in the allocortex, with neural projections into the neocortex, in humans as well as other primates. The hippocampus, as the medial pallium, is a structure found in all vertebrates. In humans, it contains two main interlocking parts: the hippocampus proper, and the dentate gyrus.
Adult neurogenesis is the process in which neurons are generated from neural stem cells in the adult. This process differs from prenatal neurogenesis.
The Morris water navigation task, also known as the Morris water maze, is a behavioral procedure mostly used with rodents. It is widely used in behavioral neuroscience to study spatial learning and memory. It enables learning, memory, and spatial working to be studied with great accuracy, and can also be used to assess damage to particular cortical regions of the brain. It is used by neuroscientists to measure the effect of neurocognitive disorders on spatial learning and possible neural treatments, to test the effect of lesions to the brain in areas concerned with memory, and to study how age influences cognitive function and spatial learning. The task is also used as a tool to study drug-abuse, neural systems, neurotransmitters, and brain development.
The radial arm maze was designed by Olton and Samuelson in 1976 to measure spatial learning and memory in rats. The original apparatus consists of eight equidistantly spaced arms, each about 4 feet long, and all radiating from a small circular central platform. At the end of each arm there is a food site, the contents of which are not visible from the central platform.
C57BL/6, often referred to as "C57 black 6", "B6", "C57" or "black 6", is a common inbred strain of laboratory mouse.
In the hippocampus, the mossy fiber pathway consists of unmyelinated axons projecting from granule cells in the dentate gyrus that terminate on modulatory hilar mossy cells and in Cornu Ammonis area 3 (CA3), a region involved in encoding short-term memory. These axons were first described as mossy fibers by Santiago Ramón y Cajal as they displayed varicosities along their lengths that gave them a mossy appearance. The axons that make up the pathway emerge from the basal portions of the granule cells and pass through the hilus of the dentate gyrus before entering the stratum lucidum of CA3. Granule cell synapses tend to be glutamatergic, though immunohistological data has indicated that some synapses contain neuropeptidergic elements including opiate peptides such as dynorphin and enkephalin. There is also evidence for co-localization of both GABAergic and glutamatergic neurotransmitters within mossy fiber terminals. GABAergic and glutamatergic co-localization in mossy fiber boutons has been observed primarily in the developing hippocampus, but in adulthood, evidence suggests that mossy fiber synapses may alternate which neurotransmitter is released through activity-dependent regulation.
The International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society (IBANGS) is a learned society that was founded in 1996. The goal of IBANGS is "promote and facilitate the growth of research in the field of neural behavioral genetics".
Genes, Brain and Behavior is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in the fields of behavioral, neural, and psychiatric genetics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society. The journal was established in 2002 as a quarterly and is currently published monthly. G2B is a hybrid open access journal, but two years after publication all content is available for free online.
Hans van Abeelen was the first Dutch behaviour geneticist. He obtained his M.Sc from the University of Groningen and his Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Nijmegen in 1965, where he stayed for the rest of his career as "wetenschappelijk hoofdmedewerker". He was a founding member of the Behavior Genetics Association and was a member-at-large of its executive committee from 1984 till 1987. He also served on the editorial board of its journal, Behavior Genetics, from its creation in 1971 to 1992. Van Abeelen took early retirement in 1991, but nevertheless became one of the founding members of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society. Over the span of his career, he published 64 articles and book chapters and edited a book, The Genetics of Behaviour, which was an early overview of European behaviour genetics.
Robert T. Gerlai is a Canadian behaviour geneticist and behavioural neuroscientist.
Neurogenetics studies the role of genetics in the development and function of the nervous system. It considers neural characteristics as phenotypes, and is mainly based on the observation that the nervous systems of individuals, even of those belonging to the same species, may not be identical. As the name implies, it draws aspects from both the studies of neuroscience and genetics, focusing in particular how the genetic code an organism carries affects its expressed traits. Mutations in this genetic sequence can have a wide range of effects on the quality of life of the individual. Neurological diseases, behavior and personality are all studied in the context of neurogenetics. The field of neurogenetics emerged in the mid to late 20th century with advances closely following advancements made in available technology. Currently, neurogenetics is the center of much research utilizing cutting edge techniques.
Ambidirectional dominance occurs in a situation where multiple genes influence a phenotype and dominance is in different directions depending on the gene. For example, for gene A increased height is dominant, while for gene B decreased height is dominant. The opposite situation, where all genes show dominance in the same direction, is called directional dominance. In the same example, for both genes A and B increased height is dominant. According to Broadhurst, ambidirectional dominance is the result of stabilising selection in the evolutionary past. Ambidirectional dominance has been found for exploratory behaviours in mice and paradise fish.
Jacqueline N. Crawley is an American behavioral neuroscientist and an expert on rodent behavioral analysis. Since July 2012, she is the Robert E. Chason Chair in Translational Research in the MIND Institute and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento. Previously, from 1983–2012, she was chief of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience in the intramural program of the National Institute of Mental Health. Her translational research program focuses on testing hypotheses about the genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders and discovering treatments for the diagnostic symptoms of autism, using mouse models. She has published more than 275 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and 110 review articles and book chapters. According to Scopus, her works have been cited over 36,000 times, giving her an h-index of 99. She has co-edited 4 books and is the author of What's Wrong With my Mouse? Behavioral Phenotyping of Transgenic and Knockout Mice, which was very well received.
Justin S. Rhodes is an American neuroscientist and a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is affiliated with the Neuroscience Program, Program of Ecology, Evolution, & Conservation Biology, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and the Neurotech group at Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. After receiving a Bachelor of Science in biology at Stanford University, Rhodes obtained a PhD in zoology in 2002 from University of Wisconsin–Madison, under the supervision of Theodore Garland, Jr. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University, he held a position as an instructor at Lewis & Clark College for a year before accepting a full-time faculty position in 2005 in the biological division of the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois. His lab investigates a broad array of topics in the field of neuroscience with particular emphasis in exercise-induced hippocampal neurogenesis, neural circuitry involved in addictive behaviors, and brain plasticity in clownfish.
Developed by Calvin S. Hall, the open field test is an experimental test used to assay general locomotor activity levels, anxiety, and willingness to explore in animals in scientific research. However, the extent to which behavior in the open field measures anxiety is controversial. The open field test can be used to assess memory by evaluating the ability of the animal to recognize a stimulus or object. Another animal test that is used to assess memory using that same concept is the novel object recognition test.
A knockout mouse, or knock-out mouse, is a genetically modified mouse in which researchers have inactivated, or "knocked out", an existing gene by replacing it or disrupting it with an artificial piece of DNA. They are important animal models for studying the role of genes which have been sequenced but whose functions have not been determined. By causing a specific gene to be inactive in the mouse, and observing any differences from normal behaviour or physiology, researchers can infer its probable function.
The development of an animal model of autism is one approach researchers use to study potential causes of autism. Given the complexity of autism and its etiology, researchers often focus only on single features of autism when using animal models.
Douglas Leon Wahlsten is a Canadian neuroscientist, psychologist, and behavior geneticist. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Alberta. As of 2011, he was also a visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in North Carolina, United States. He is known for his laboratory research on the behavior of mice, and for his theoretical writings on a wide range of other topics. His laboratory research has included studies of the effects of different laboratory environments and experimenter characteristics on the results of mouse studies. He and his colleagues have also developed an altered form of the rotarod performance test involving wrapping sandpaper around the rod, to reduce the ability of mice to grip the rod and ride around on it. He has criticized some of his fellow behavior geneticists for trying to separate the effects of genes and the environment on human intelligence, an endeavor he considers futile. He also met and became friends with Leilani Muir, later helping to edit her autobiography, A Whisper Past. He was the president of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society from 2000 to 2001.
The Hebb–Williams maze is a maze used in comparative psychology to assess the cognitive ability of small animals such as mice and rats. It was developed by Donald O. Hebb and his student Kenneth Williams in 1946, when both men were working at Queen's University at Kingston. A modified version, intended specifically to measure the intelligence of rats, was described in a 1951 paper by Hebb's students Rabinovitch and Rosvold. This modified version is the most commonly used in research where the aim is to measure animals' problem-solving abilities. In general, animals are tested in the Hebb–Williams maze's twelve separate mazes after acclimating to six practice mazes, though some studies have not used all twelve testing mazes. The two main procedures for the maze are the reward conditioning task and the water escape task. The maze has been used to investigate strain and sex differences in mice. A 2018 study argued that the maze is potentially useful for translational research in fragile X syndrome in humans.
Announcement of re-issue on CD of 1987 German edition of Anubias revision