Dr. Aleksandra Badura
- Position: PhD, Associate Professor
- Lab Head in:
Biography
Throughout my Ph.D. studies and Postdoctoral Fellowships my work had focused on unraveling the function of the cerebellum in health and disease, encompassing two research lines: Line-1 integrated experimental techniques with modeling to investigate the mechanisms of cerebellar learning. I have established that the modulation of cerebellar activity is essential for motor learning and helped to develop a computer model that reproduces experimental data and can predict motor impairments based on neural activity. Using intravital two-photon imaging, we discovered that granule cells acquire signals predictive of motor performance . This marked a paradigm shift in the understanding of cerebellar coding. We are working on incorporating those findings into our model. Furthermore, I have developed tools for monitoring neuronal activity that advance two-photon imaging. In Line-2, I investigated the role of the cerebellum in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We showed that cerebellar deficits are common in ASD. Recently, by disrupting cerebellar activity during different stages of development, we established a critical period during which specific cerebellar regions are crucial for non-motor behaviors. This work has been made possible by the VENI-ZonMw grant. In June 2018 I was awarded a VIDI-ZonMw grant to work on understanding the cerebello-cerebral networks underlying shared autistic traits.