Wim E. Crusio (born Wilhelmus Elisabeth Crusio on 20 December 1954) is a Dutch people behavioral Neurogenetics and a directeur de recherche (research director) with the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Talence, France.
Education and career
Crusio received his bachelor's degree in biology from Radboud University Nijmegen in 1975, where he went on to obtain a master's degree and then a PhD in 1979 and 1984, respectively.
His
Anubias revision, which was originally published in 1979,
was translated in German
and continues to engender interest.
For his PhD thesis, Crusio studied the inheritance of the effects of
anosmia on
exploration of mice, and more in general the genetic architecture of exploratory behavior, using quantitative-genetic methods such as the
diallel cross.
From 1984 to 1987, Crusio worked as a postdoc at the University of Heidelberg, supported by a NATO Science Fellowship
Research
Hippocampal mossy fibers
Crusio and his collaborators found that
neuroanatomy variations in the mouse
hippocampus, in particular the sizes of their intra- and infrapyramidal mossy fibers (IIPMF) correlated with learning performance.
Together with Herbert Schwegler and Hans-Peter Lipp, Crusio showed that an inverse correlation, that is, animals with larger IIPMF learn better, could be found for
spatial learning in a radial arm maze task.
Taken together, Crusio and collaborators think that it is highly likely that this correlation is
causality,
although this is not universally accepted.
Mouse model of depression
When mice are exposed to unpredictable chronic mild
chronic stress (UCMS), they start exhibiting symptoms reminiscent of major depressive disorder in humans.
As it had been suggested that deficits in hippocampal
neurogenesis might underlie depression,
Crusio and collaborators undertook a series of experiments investigating changes in behavior and neurogenesis in mice that had undergone UCMS. They showed dramatic changes in levels of
aggression,
,
depressive-like behaviors,
[ and learning,][ However, the results were strain- and sex-specific and there did not appear to be a clear-cut correlation between the different changes, so that they finally concluded that although their data do not disprove the idea that deficits in hippocampal neurogenesis solely underlie the behavioral impairments observed in human psychiatric disorders such as depression, they do not provide support for this hypothesis either.][
]
Mouse model of autism
More recently, Crusio has been investigating the possibility that Fmr1 knockout mouse might perhaps be used as a animal model for autism. This idea is based on the fact that patients suffering from the Fragile X syndrome, caused by a deficiency of the FMR1 gene often show autistic . A good mouse model for the Fragile X syndrome is available in the form of mice in which the Fmr1 gene (the mouse homologue of the human FMR1 gene) has been invalidated.
Editorial activities
Crusio is the founding editor-in-chief of Genes, Brain and Behavior, which he edited from 2001 to 2011.[ Reprinted in: ] Currently, he is editing the Cambridge Handbooks in Behavioral Genetics, a series of handbooks published by Cambridge University Press,
Community service
In 1996, Crusio was one of two co-founders of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society,
Significant papers
According to Google Scholar, Crusio's works have been cited over 10,000 times and he has an h-index of 46.
External links
