QB3 Webinar: Tom Nowakowski, UCSF. “Establishing Tools for Human Neuroscience”

Individual neurodevelopmental, behavioral, or intellectual disorders are rare, but collectively pose a significant socioeconomic burden to industrialized countries. In some cases, these disorders take severe forms that are caused by genetic mutations. While many pathogenic mutations have been identified, their impact on normal brain development is not well understood. Studies of animal models have provided us with a foundational understanding of mammalian neurodevelopment, and emerging technologies now enable us to extend these studies to humans. For example, high-throughput single-cell transcriptomics has begun to systematically define the astonishing diversity of the human cerebral cortex at the molecular level1. However, these classifications are divorced from the developmental processes through which specialized cells emerge. They therefore fail to capture the functional interdependencies between differentiated cells that may become vulnerable to genetic or environmental insults.

Our mission is to advance the understanding of human brain development and its relationship to neurodevelopmental, behavioral, and intellectual disorders through basic science research. Our goal is to create tools that allow us to more accurately model human neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as tools to deliver and de-risk precision interventions.