Principal Investigator Martha Constantine-Paton
In addition to affecting development, NMDA receptors are also thought to underlie many aspects of learning throughout life. Understanding the relationship between learning and development may help explain why children learn new skills more readily than adults, and why they recover much better than adults from brain damage. It will also have implications for understanding the many developmental disorders that have their origins in early life.
One disease of particular interest to Constantine-Paton is schizophrenia. Several clues suggest that schizophrenia may involve defects in NMDA receptor signaling. For example, drugs that inhibit these receptors can cause psychosis in humans. Furthermore, one natural regulator of NMDA receptors is a brain protein called neuregulin, and recent evidence suggests that mutations in the neuregulin gene can increase the risk of schizophrenia. Constantine-Paton is collaborating with researchers at the Broad Institute to identify novel molecules that block neuregulin’s effects, and which might lead to new therapeutic strategies for treating schizophrenia.