Mac Hooks

Assistant Professor, Neurobiology

Research

Organization of mouse cortical circuitry underlying control of movement.

How does the brain control movement of the body? In mammals, motor cortex is specialized for the planning, initiation, control, and learning of movements. But the computations performed by motor cortex circuit is unknown.

My research seeks to:

(a) identify the specific connections of defined cell types in motor cortex,

(b) characterize the connections that change strength during learning,

(c) explain how these specific connections drive neuronal firing,

Thus, our goal is a circuit diagram of the brain with a functional understanding of how the circuit processing information.

Three main short term goals in the lab are to:

(1) Understand how feedforward inhibition is recruited in motor cortex by distinct cortical and thalamic inputs. We study how these two inputs differentially target different types of inhibitory interneurons (such as fast spiking PV+ interneurons and low threshold spiking SST+ interneurons).

(2) Understand how feedforward inhibition changes over development and during motor learning, using cell-type specific mice to excite defined interneuron types and a combination of behavior and optogenetic approaches to monitor synaptic changes between defined cell types during motor skill acquisition.

(3) Understand how different corticostriatal outputs target specific cell types of basal ganglia in normal conditions and in disease models.

We use mouse motor and sensory cortex as a model system, taking advantage of cell-type specific mouse lines and optogentic tools. Our techniques include stereotaxic surgery, use of AAV for expressing optogenetic tools and fluorophores, mouse brain slice and laser-scanning microscopy to map circuits, and anatomical techniques for reconstructing circuits.

Publications