User:Mbjohnson

Research Interests
I'm a postdoctoral associate (and previously a graduate student) in the Sestan Lab in the Neurobiology Department at Yale, where we study the genetic and molecular specification of pyramidal neurons in the developing mammalian neocortex. (More here.) I'm especially interested in deciphering the functions of genes and gene products enriched in the frontal cortex of primates, as these genes may be involved in specifying the frontal cortical circuitry underlying higher cognitive functions such as working memory and speech & language. In addition, defects in these genes and the developmental processes they regulate may contribute to our species' risk for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Sestan-hba09 Sestan-numb

Before graduate school, I worked as a research assistant in the lab of Judith Ford in the Psychiatry Department at Stanford School of Medicine, where we used neuroimaging techniques including fMRI and EEG to study auditory hallucinations in schizophrenic patients. Ford-schizophrenia Prior to that I majored in neuroscience at Brown University, where I did an honors thesis in the lab of Jerome Sanes and played ultimate frisbee.

Publications

 * 1) Sestan-hba09 pmid=19477152
 * 2) Sestan-numb pmid=17589506
 * 3) Ford-schizophrenia pmid=15955502