After obtaining a Master's degree in cellular and integrative neuroscience at University of Strasbourg (France) and a PhD in medicine in the field of neurophysiology of pain at University of Helsinki (Finland), Nora moved to the UK as a post-doc in neurobehavioural genetics at the MRC Harwell (UK) and then joined UKHSA to lead the Neurobiology group.
Throughout my academic journey I was interested by the field of neuroepigenetics. How and why adult on-set of neurological/neuropsychiatric disorders start? At which moment and how the brain cells trigger a succession of events that cascade to neuronal loss and memory decline in neurodegenerative disorders? How life events trigger depression and affective disorders in adults? How environmental hazards induce the switch from a healthy to a pathological neuron? To address these questions, I have followed an academic path to learn skills in animal behaviour, electrophysiology, biochemistry and genetics to implement them in our group and investigate the effects of environmental hazards on the epigenetics of brain disorders.
The aim of the Neurobiology Group is to study the effects of environmental hazards on the epigenetics of brain disorders.
Brain disorders encompass neurological (i.e.: Alzheimer's disease, sleep disorders, chronic pain, epilepsy) and neuropsychiatric (i.e.: Depression, anxiety, affective disorders) conditions and diseases. Most of them are multifactorial with interplay between environmental and genetic factors. One cellular mechanism underlying the link between environmental and genetic factors is epigenetic mechanisms. |
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