Demi Brizee awarded Thesis Prize for Biology
Demi
Brizee has been awarded the Young Talent Thesis Prize for Biology for her
master thesis written for the Research Master in Neuroscience, titled
‘Activity-dependence of parvalbumin interneuron myelination.’ The prize was
awarded by the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (Koninklijke
Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen; www.khmw.nl)
and was sponsored by Enza Zaden.
This
work described how cell-specific activation of parvalbumin-positive
interneurons results in increased myelination of these cells in the cerebral
cortex. Surprisingly, the increase in the number of myelin segments was
accompanied by a corresponding change in axonal morphology. This works shows
that, even in adult age, the brain remains plastic in various manners.
The
thesis work was performed under supervision of Prof. dr. Steven Kushner and has
been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
The
prize was awarded on the 25th of November, 2019, in Haarlem, The
Netherlands.
Stedehouder J*, Brizee D*, Shpak G, Kushner SA (2018) Activity-dependent myelination of parvalbumin interneurons mediated by axonal morphological plasticity. J Neurosci 38:3631–3631
