Dr. Jens Buschert Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1 Gebäude A9 D-48149 Münster Phone: +49 (0) 251/8357122 Fax.: +49 (0) 251/8357123 E-mail: jbuschert@gmx.de Website

PhD in 2016

Research Project

The influence of environmental factors on a mouse model for neuropsychiatric disorders

The development of neuropsychiatric disorders is based on a complex interaction between genetic risk factors as well as pre-, peri-, and postnatal environmental factors. From humans it is well known that a maternal infection during pregnancy elevates the offspring’s risk to progress neuropsychiatric disorders in later life. Although the developmental risk is higher a second negative hit as a catalyst is necessary to manifest the disorder (cp. “two-hit hypothesis of schizophrenia”). Thus, a well established mouse model of viral-like infection is used to mimic the acute phase of a viral infection on pregnant dams (1st hit). They are exposed to either polyI:C or vehicle treatment and the offspring will be kept either in a chronic stress paradigm (2nd hit) or in standard housing conditions. The dissertation project aims at dissecting the contribution of pre- and postnatal environmental factors on the development of schizophrenia-like behavioural deficits, e. g. social behaviour, locomotor response to psycho stimulants or prepulse inhibition. To investigate neuronal correlates underlying these phenotypes further investigations including a) adult neurogenesis, b) the diversity of interneurons as marker for cortical inhibition and c) the myelinisation of nerve cells during neuronal development will be realized.

PhD Committee

Prof. Dr. Weiqi Zhang
Prof. Dr. Sylvia Kaiser
Prof. Dr. Norbert Sachser

Publications

Buschert J, Sakalem ME, Saffari R, Hohoff C, Rothermundt M, Arolt V, Zhang W, Ambrée O (2016) Prenatal immune activation in mice blocks the effects of environmental enrichment on exploratory behavior and microglia density. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psych 67:10–20. doi:10.1016/j.pnpbp.2016.01.005.

Ambrée O, Buschert J, Zhang W, Arolt V, Dere E, Zlomuzica A (2014) Impaired spatial learning and reduced adult hippocampal neurogenesis in histamine H1-receptor knockout mice. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol 24:1394–1404. doi:10.1016/j.euroneuro.2014.04.006.

Buschert J, Hohoff C, Touma C, Palme R, Rothermundt M, Arolt V, Zhang W, Ambrée O (2013) S100B overexpression increases behavioral and neural plasticity in response to the social environment during adolescence. J Psychiatr Res 47:1791–1799. doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2013.08.001.

Duning K et al. (2013) Common exonic missense variants in the C2 domain of the human KIBRA protein modify lipid binding and cognitive performance. Transl Psychiatry 3:e272. doi:10.1038/tp.2013.49.

CV