Dr. Tanveer Singh joined the Chung lab in April 2024.
The Chung laboratory is interested in understanding how ion channels and their dynamic regulation modulate neuronal excitability, communications, and plasticity in the brain.
Ion channels are pore-forming proteins that generate electric current by mediating the flow of ions across the plasma membrane in morphologically and functionally distinct neuronal compartments called axons and dendrites. Axons generate and propagate action potentials whereas dendrites receive them at inter-cellular junctions called synapses where synaptic transmissions (communications) occur between neurons.
Ion channel dysregulation is involved in a wide variety of neurologic and neuropsychiatric diseases. In Chung lab, we focus on epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Epilepsy is a common chronic brain disorder caused by excessive brain activity clinically characterized as seizures, which are abnormal and uncontrolled discharges of electrical signals in the brain cells called neurons. Drug-resistant seizures have severe consequences including cognitive decline, high mortality rate, psychiatric disorders, neurodevelopmental delay, and brain damage. Hence, better understanding of the pathogenesis of epilepsy is critical to develop novel therapeutic interventions and early diagnostics for epilepsy. A fundamental question is “how do neurons change themselves to produce excessive electrical signals in an epileptic brain compared to a normal brain?”