Group 1 metabotropic glutamate receptors (Gp1 mGluRs) are essential for neuroplasticity, neurodevelopment and cognition, but chronically active Gp1 mGluRs has been linked to many pathologic conditions including epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders. To characterize the effects of chronically...

Molecular and integrative physiology professor Hee Jung Chung, her postdoctoral fellow Eung Chang Kim, Psychology professor Justin Rhodes, and their colleagues discovered that heterozygous loss of KCNQ2 potassium channel gene induces autism-associated behaviors in mice including social avoidance,...

Mice with epilepsy have altered patterns of neuron activity in the portion of the brain that controls the reproductive endocrine system, University of Illinois researchers report in a new study.

Molecular and integrative physiology professor Hee Jung Chung, postdoctoral fellow Eung Chang Kim, and their colleagues discovered that abnormal expression and phosphoinositide regulation of KCNQ/Kv7 potassium channels underlie neuronal hyperexcitability and injury in early-onset epileptic...

New findings suggest that novel down-regulation of GIRK channels by caspase-3 may contribute to NMDAR-dependent hippocampal atrophy following chronic epileptic seizures

Epilepsy is a medical condition characterized by spontaneous seizures due to hyperexcitability of brain neurons. Assistant Professor Nien-Pei Tsai, graduate student Jiuhe Zhu and colleagues uncovered that an insufficient function or mutations of a novel epilepsy-associated gene Nedd4-2 leads to...

A new era has dawned in understanding neuropathological disorders such as epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression, and autism spectrum disorders. These disorders, traditionally classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Society, are now being re-...

The infinitely complex workings of the human brain have intrigued researchers for centuries. Our understanding of its workings have been limited, not by our curiosity, but by our tools. Now, with the growth of new molecular biology and genomics approaches, big data, and engineering advances that...