Dr. Florence Crestani

 

Main Goals, Keywords

• Psychoneurobiology of panic symptoms and chronic anxiety
• Functional significance of synaptic and extrasynaptic GABAA receptors

Keywords: Behavioural neuroscience, pharmacology, cardiorespiratory physiology, emotion, cognition, neurogenesis, GABAA receptors, mutant mice

Group Members

1 senior scientist, 1 Master student, 1 technician

Previous and Current Research

Psychoneurobiology of fear and anxiety: Establishment of a mutant mouse model (mice that are heterozygous for the GABAA receptor g2-subunit) that recapitulates molecular, pharmacological, behavioural, emotional and cognitive features reminiscent of the human chronic anxiety condition.

GABAA receptor systems: Functional significance of benzodiazepine-sensitive GABAA receptor subtypes based on the behavioural and pharmacological characterization of mice carrying a point mutation on a given GABAA receptor a-subunit rendering the corresponding receptor insensitive to diazepam.

Future Projects

Modeling panic attack symptoms in normal and mutant mice to understand the mechanisms underlying the relationship between respiration, fear and cognition with emphasis on the GABAA receptor system (collaboration with Markus Rudin, Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Zurich, and Bernhard Lüscher, Penn State Neuroscience Institute, USA).

Characterization of new mutant mouse lines with GABAA receptor dysfunction (collaboration with Uwe Rudolph, Mailman Research Center, Belmont, USA)

Techniques and Equipment

A wide range of behavioural, physiological and pharmacological assays for testing various sensorimotor functions (automated actimeters, rotarod, …), breathing behaviour (whole-body plethysmography), cardiac activity (non invasive ECG-tunnel), emotional behaviours (free-choice exploration, light-dark choice, elevated X-maze, freezing box, acoustic startle, Vogel’s conflict test, …) and cognitive functions (automated radial maze, conditioning, multiple learning and memory tests, …) in mice, videotracking system.

Selected Publications

• Koester C, Rudolph U, Haenggi T, Papilloud A, Fritschy JM, Crestani F. Dissecting the role of diazepam-sensitive γ-aminobutyric acid type A receptors in defensive behavioral reactivity to mild threat. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2013 Jan;103(3):541-9. doi: 10.1016/j.pbb.2012.10.004. Epub 2012 Oct 12.
• Knabl, J., Zeilhofer, U.B., Crestani, F., Rudolph, U., Zeilhofer, H.U. Genuine antihyperalgesia by systemic diazepam revealed by experiments in GABAA receptor point-mutated mice. Pain Feb 2009: 141(3): 233-8. Epub 2008 Dec 16.
  
• Earnheart, J.C., Schweizer, C., Crestani, F., Iwasato, T., Itohara, S., Mohler, H., Lüscher, B. GABAergic control of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in relation to behavior indicative of trait anxiety and depression states. J Neurosci. 2007, Apr 4; 27(14): 3845-54.

Funding

Swiss National Science Foundation

URL

www.pharma.uzh.ch/research/neuromorphology.html