Stanislav Zakharenko Lab

For young children, learning new auditory information (e.g., a new language or music) is often an effortless task. However, there is a developmental progression of difficulty that occurs as we age. This added hurdle is created by changes in the plasticity of our auditory neural circuits. The central auditory system (including the thalamus and cortex) exhibits electrophysiological signatures that show changes in synaptic plasticity (such as long-term potentiation and long-term depression) in the thalamocortical circuity. We are interested in understanding why this early critical period for auditory learning becomes closed and identifying the mechanisms that preclude us from effortlessly acquiring new auditory information later in life. 

Our mechanistic understanding of schizophrenia has not considerably improved, mostly because schizophrenia is a polygenic, multicausal disease that is difficult to model. We are exploring the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) and other rare copy number variations that present the highest genetic risk for development of schizophrenia and are possible to model in animals and human organoids. Our goal is to identify the mechanisms that will better our understanding of this enigmatic disease. 

The ability to distinguish one sound from another or from the surrounding acoustic background is essential for everyday hearing, linguistic abilities, and musicality. Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) is of interest to auditory researchers, because despite developmental delays in physical and intellectual abilities, individuals with WBS show strengths in linguistic and/or musical skills, remarkable auditory acuity, and even surprising prevalence of “perfect pitch.” Elucidating the mechanisms underlying WBS may provide new insights on how the auditory system encodes our ability to identify and discriminate sounds.