Rate My Professor Jason Christie

The Christie Lab investigates the neural-circuit mechanisms that underlie learning-dependent optimization of behavior, with a primary emphasis on the cerebellum. This structure guides adaptive updating of reflexive movements and contributes to experience-driven refinement of higher-order brain functions such as thinking, planning, and decision-making. Employing a bottom-up strategy, the lab uses ex-vivo slice electrophysiology to identify principles of information processing in cerebellar neurons, including properties of neurotransmission, intrinsic excitability, and associative plasticity. These findings are validated through in vivo measurements in awake, behaving animals via techniques including two-photon microscopy, optogenetics, and calcium imaging to link cellular activity, neural computation, and behavior in both healthy models and those of neurological disorders like autism and intellectual disability. Key publications include 'Autonomous Purkinje cell activation instructs bidirectional motor learning through evoked dendritic calcium signaling' (Nature Communications, 2021), 'Conversion of graded presynaptic climbing fiber activity into graded postsynaptic Ca²⁺ signals by Purkinje cell dendrites' (Neuron, 2019), 'Graded control of climbing fiber-mediated plasticity and learning by inhibition in the cerebellum' (Neuron, 2018), 'Cerebellum encodes and influences the initiation, performance, and termination of discontinuous movements in mice' (eLife, 2022), and 'Tbx1 haploinsufficiency leads to local skull deformity, paraflocculus and flocculus dysplasia, and motor-learning deficit in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome' (Nature Communications, 2024). Christie's contributions have significantly influenced the field of cerebellar neuroscience and motor learning.