![]() ![]() “What is it that is not allowing these neurons to connect properly in autism and schizophrenia? Can we identify synaptic deficits or other transcriptomic changes that explain why this is happening? Then we can either do gene therapy by targeting specific neurons or boost activity in the neurons that need a boost,” Ibrahim explains. The research will also include RNA sequencing to identify what is happening in different neurons or across different mutant mouse models. A special two-photon microscope is then used to look into the living mouse’s brain and see which neurons fire up under what circumstances and how that corresponds to a mouse’s attention. These mice are exposed to different situations, and specific nerves are turned on or off with drug injections. To do this, Ibrahim is using transgenic mice with neurons that are labeled so they fluoresce when activated. This is what allows us to filter out the construction work on the other side of the road, but suddenly come to attention if we hear an explosion. Ibrahim is exploring what happens to the brain’s circuitry that changes us from babies that get excited by any visual or auditory stimulus to adults who only react when experience tells us that something is worth our attention. ![]() With schizophrenia, people can experience visual and auditory hallucinations when there is no corresponding sensory input from the environment. People with autism can find it difficult to ignore noises that others are able to filter out as unimportant and not worth expending the brain’s resources on. This information could have implications for people with neurological disorders, such as autism or schizophrenia - an area where much of Ibrahim’s work at KAUST is now focused. Those investigations showed that the development of their connectivity after birth was significantly affected by the strength of inputs from neurons originating in the thalamus, the relay station in the brain that processes sensory information from the body. In her postdoctoral work, Ibrahim continued her fascination with layer 1 interneurons. This allows a mouse in a visually low-contrast environment, for example, to use sound from a moving predator to better see where it is coming from. These audio-visual interactions likely play a role in sharpening vision in the environment. research, published in Neuron in 2016, revealed a subset of inhibitory neurons in the top layer of the mouse visual cortex, called layer 1 interneurons, that are strongly connected by auditory nerve fibers and are excited by sound. “The act of looking at that person helps to tune out some of the noise and improves the ability to understand what they are saying.” “There are lots of interactions between different sensory modalities that try to increase our signal-to-noise ratio to help us comprehend something in our visual environment,” she says. The act of looking at that person helps to tune out some of the noise and improves the ability to understand what they are saying. She explains this with the example of the cocktail party effect, where a person is having difficulty hearing what someone else is saying due to background noise at a social gathering. at the University of Southern California, she identified connections between auditory and visual neurons in the top layer of the brain’s cortex that may help to combine the powers of the senses to boost sensory perception. Ibrahim’s career journey began in a way that many would consider unconventional, and her research is equally extraordinary. ![]() ![]() and postdoc placement in the United States, she is now continuing her research journey at KAUST in Saudi Arabia. Born in Bulgaria to Palestinian parents, Leena Ali Ibrahim was educated in Bulgaria and India. ![]()
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