| | Principal Investigators
| Jacqueline N.
Crawley, Ph.D. |
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Dr.
Crawley is Chief of the Laboratory
of Behavioral Neuroscience of the Intramural Research
Program, National Institute of Mental Health, National
Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She received a B.A. in Biology from the
University of Pennsylvania in 1971, and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Maryland in 1976.
Postdoctoral research in neuropsychopharmacology was conducted at Yale University School of Medicine.
She is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. She is the recipient of many honors and awards,
including President of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, Mathilde Solowey Lecture
Award in Neuroscience, Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute Preceptor Award, Society for Neuroscience Membership Committee Chairmanship
Award, Fleur Strand Summer Neuropeptide Conference Award, International Behavioral Neuroscience Society Marjorie A. Myers Lifetime
Achievement Award, the Autism Awareness Day Keynote Award and President of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuropeptides and serves on the editorial boards of twelve scientific journals.
She is the author of the widely used book What′s Wrong With My Mouse? Behavioral Phenotyping of Transgenic and Knockout Mice. |
| Research Interests |
| Dr. Crawley’s laboratory generates new rodent behavioral tasks and applies emerging technologies to investigate genes regulating complex behavioral traits. Employing a comprehensive range of behavioral tests and control parameters, Dr. Crawley’s research team developed a three-tiered strategy for mouse behavioral phenotyping that is now
routinely applied to investigations of mutant mice
by the international biomedical research community. Mutant mouse models of human genetic diseases, including autism, Alzheimer's, cognitive decline, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tay-Sachs, Sandhoff’s, Lowe syndrome, Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, ataxia telangiectasia, epilepsy and obesity have been characterized for behavioral phenotypes with conceptual analogies to the human symptoms. To
test hypotheses about the causes of autism spectrum disorders, mouse behavioral assays with face validity to the diagnostic symptoms of autism are being developed, including social approach, reciprocal social interaction, juvenile play, auditory and olfactory communication, motor stereotypies, repetitive and perseverative behaviors and resistance to change in routine. Applying this approach, an obscure inbred strain of mice, BTBR T+tf/J, was discovered to display social deficits, communication abnormalities and repetitive self-grooming relevant to the three core symptoms of autism. Transgenic knockout, and knockin mice with targeted mutations in candidate neurodevelopmental genes for autism, including neuroligins and shanks, are currently being analyzed to investigate the biological mechanisms underlying autism spectrum disorders. Robust behavioral phenotypes in optimized mouse models are being employed as translational tools to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of novel
treatments for autism spectrum disorders.
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| Representative Selected Recent Publications: |
-
Silverman JL, Yang M, Lord C, Crawley JN.:
Behavioural phenotyping assays for mouse models of autism. Nat Rev Neurosci., 11(7):490-502, 2010. (View PDF)
- Bozdagi O, Sakurai T, Papapetrou D, Wang X, Dickstein DL, Takahashi N, Kajiwara Y, Yang M, Katz AM, Scattoni ML, Harris MJ, Saxena R, Silverman JL, Crawley JN, Zhou Q, Hof PR, Buxbaum JD.:
Haploinsufficiency of the autism-associated Shank3 gene leads to deficits in synaptic function, social interaction, and social communication. Mol Autism. , 17;1(1):15., 2010.
- Scattoni ML, Ricceri L, Crawley JN.:
Unusual repertoire of vocalizations in adult BTBR T+tf/J mice during three types of social encounters. Genes Brain Behav. , (1):44-56., 2011. (View PDF)
- Yang M, Perry K, Weber MD, Katz AM, Crawley JN.:
Social peers rescue autism-relevant sociability deficits in adolescent mice. Autism Res. , (1):17-27, 2010.
- Silverman JL, Tolu SS, Barkan CL, Crawley JN:
Repetitive self-grooming behavior in the BTBR mouse model of autism is blocked by the mGluR5 antagonist MPEP
Neuropsychopharmacology 35: 976-989, 2010. (View PDF)
- Crawley JN:
What's Wrong With My Mouse? Behaviorial Phenotyping of Transgenic and Knockout Mice, Second Edition John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 2007.
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