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Overview
The 2020 Bernice Grafstein Lecture in Neuroscience was held virtually on Wednesday, October 21, at 3 PM, Eastern Time. The IPN was听pleased to welcome Dr. Huda Y. Zoghbi, M.D. as this year's keynote speaker. Dr. Zoghbi is a听Professor at听the Baylor College of Medicine. She is also Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Director of the Jan and Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital.听
The Bernice Grafstein Lecture in Neuroscience is an opportunity to discover and learn about cutting-edge neuroscience from a world-renowned invited speaker. The lecture is generously supported by Dr. Bernice Grafstein, herself a pioneer of neuroscience.听
This lecture is open to the public.听
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"Genetic and therapeutic approaches to tackle neurodevelopmental disorders"听
Huda Zoghbi is Professor of Pediatrics, Molecular and Human Genetics, Neurology, and Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine, an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the founding Director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children鈥檚 Hospital.
Zoghbi鈥檚 interests range from neurodevelopment to neurodegeneration. Her discovery (with Harry Orr) that Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 1 is caused by expansion of a polyglutamine tract and her subsequent studies that such expansion leads to accumulation of the mutant protein in neurons has had profound ramifications since many late-onset neurological disorders involve similar accumulations of disease-driving proteins. Zoghbi鈥檚 work in neurodevelopment led to the discovery of the gene Math1/Atoh1 and to showing that it governs the development of several components of the proprioceptive, balance, hearing, vestibular, and breathing pathways. Zoghbi鈥檚 group also discovered that mutations in MECP2 cause the postnatal neurological disorder Rett syndrome and revealed the importance of this gene for various neuropsychiatric features. Her team also showed that doubling MeCP2 protein levels causes progressive neurological phenotypes in mice, which also proved to be true in people, and has gone on to show antisense oligonulceotides can reverse the disorder in the preclinical animal model. Zoghbi trained over 90 scientists and physician-scientists and is a member of several professional organizations and boards. She has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among Dr. Zoghbi鈥檚 honors are the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize from Rockefeller University, the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Canada Gairdner International Prize, and most recently the 2020 Brain Prize (shared with Adrian Bird), Lundbeck Foundation
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Dr. Bernice Grafstein
Dr. Bernice Grafstein received her B.A. in physiology at the University of Toronto and her Ph.D. in neurophysiology at 91社区 in Montreal. As a graduate student she trained as an electrophysiologist, working on structure-function correlations in the cerebral cortex. Her thesis work was on the mechanism of cortical spreading depression, which appears as a wave of decreased electrical activity advancing slowly over the grey matter. This phenomenon has been recognized as playing an important role in migraine, stroke and other cortical pathology. Her contributions established the role of the extracellular movement of potassium ions in propagation of spreading depression, and her work has become a classic in its field, acknowledged even today. She subsequently became interested in nervous system development and regeneration, and is known for her work on intracellular transport of protein in normal and regenerating neurons, as well as other forms of molecular signaling among various cell types in the brain. She has been President of the Society for Neuroscience and is currently a Trustee and Vice-President of the Grass Foundation, which supports training and research in neuroscience. She is Co-Director of the Brain and Mind course for second-year medical students and teaches in a number of other Medical College and Graduate School courses.
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