“Understanding motor recovery, blindsight, decision and neuropsychiatric disorder with genetic tools in nonhuman primates”

Tadashi Isa, MD, PhD
Professor
Division of Neurobiology and Physiology,
Department of Neuroscience,
Graduate School of Medicine
in Kyoto University

What are unique to primates include (1) fine hand motor skill which is often affected by stroke or spinal cord injury, and (2) high level cognition, including flexible decision making, which is often affected in neuropsychiatric disorders. Both of them are difficult to replicate in rodent models. During the past 2-3 decades, our group has been working on the neural mechanisms of recovery of dexterous hand movements after partial spinal cord injury by applying multi-disciplinary approaches including electrophysiology, neuroanatomy, non-invasive brain imaging, pharmacological intervention, and chemogenetic or optogenetic pathway-selective manipulation techniques with viral vectors in macaque monkeys. Using these techniques, we are also extending our research to understanding the neural mechanisms underlying visuomotor systems preserved after damage to the primary visual cortex (blindsight), and flexible decision making based on motivation or risk preference. Furthermore, we are applying our disciplines to understand the neural mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disorder phenotypes created by genome editing in macaques. I will also talk about all these studies on nonhuman primates and also on the future perspectives of our studies.