Research themes and experimental approaches

One of the GIN’s specialties is to have teams with a very high level of expertise in fields such as cytoskeletons, intercellular traffic and synaptic plasticity. The mechanisms studied at this scale include Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, Huntington’s disease, mood disorders and myopathy.

The next step, integrating molecular and cellular mechanisms that are fundamental to the physiology of the nervous system, is vital for understanding brain function. The GIN develops and studies multiple animal models (drosophila, rodents...) for different pathologies, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, neuromuscular diseases, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. However, research at the GIN is not limited to chronic diseases. Models of tumors, cerebrovascular accidents and head trauma are also studied in order to develop new therapeutic approaches. An array of advanced tools (electrophysiology, MRI...) are used to study and understand these models in conjunction with fundamental neuroscience expertise as well as to evaluate innovative therapeutic strategies, some of which were developed at the GIN (see below, “technological and therapeutic innovations”).

One of the GIN’s strengths is the fact that there are several clinicians on our research teams. This collaboration between doctors and researchers is vital, not only for developing new therapeutic approaches because of the rapid transfer of fundamental knowledge to the clinics, but also for increasing pure researchers’ knowledge of the complexity of the studied pathologies. As a result, there are several ongoing clinical studies that implement concepts or tools developed at the GIN. Finally, the GIN is very involved in the Neuropsynov project of the University Hospital Federation (FHU), which aims to develop and integrate pre-clinical and clinical knowledge gathered on a group of neurological and psychiatric pathologies.

Increasing our fundamental knowledge in neuroscience and to develop innovative therapies requires multidisciplinary approaches and methodological developments. For example, those led in the areas of nervous system development, the functioning of the nervous system using optogenetic approaches, the reconstitution of the neural network on integrated circuits and the study of intracellular dynamics, electrophysiology, MRI-type imaging methods, x and/or optical radiation (the GIN’s cellular imaging technological platform).

The GIN also develops and assesses new image-guided therapeutic strategies for physical (neurostimulation, TMS, synchrotron radiation) and biological methods (cellular, gene and pharmaceutical therapies).