Haiyun Xu, Professor

时间： 2015-10-21 09:00 - 11:00

地点： Room 1113, Wang Kezhen Building

Cuprizone is a copper chelator able to selectively induce demyelination and oligodendrocyte loss, followed by spontaneous remyelination, in brains of rodents. Thus the cuprizone mouse has been widely used as an animal model for demyelination and remyelination research. Recent studies, however, have examined the behavioral changes in the cuprizone-exposed mice, including those relevant to psychiatric diseases. The serial research in my lab has established the cuprizone mouse as a novel animal model of schizophrenia for which human studies have provided observational data suggesting a putative role of dysfunctional oligodendrocytes in the pathogenesis of this mental disorder, including white matter abnormalities, alterations in the structure and functions of myelin-related genes, and schizophrenia behaviors seen in patients with white matter diseases. Our experimental data not only showed behavioral changes of the emotional and cognitive functions in the cuprizone-exposed mice, but also demonstrated the protective effects of certain existing antipsychotics on the cuprizone-induced behavioral changes and white matter alterations in the brain which mimic those seen in patients with schizophrenia. More recent studies in my lab provided evidence of neuonal dysfunctions preceding the obvious demyelination and proposed a mechanism of the dysrupption of neuron-glia integration for schizophrenia.

2015-10-21

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2015-10-21