Martha Constantine-Paton is a

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, Biological neural network, n ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

. She is a member of the

McGovern Institute for Brain Research The McGovern Institute for Brain Research is a research institute within MIT. Its mission is to understand how the brain works and to discover new ways to prevent or treat brain disorders. The institute was founded in 2000 by Patrick McGover ...

and a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Overview

Prior to joining MIT in 1999 she held faculty appointments at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

. She is an expert on

synaptic plasticity In neuroscience, synaptic plasticity is the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time, in response to increases or decreases in their activity. Since memories are postulated to be represented by vastly interconnected neural circui ...

and

brain development The development of the nervous system, or neural development (neurodevelopment), refers to the processes that generate, shape, and reshape the nervous system of animals, from the earliest stages of embryonic development to adulthood. The fiel ...

, particularly

visual development The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sigh ...

. She is known for her studies on three-eyed frogs, a demonstration of

neural plasticity Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it p ...

in which a third eye grafted into a developing tadpole produces a pattern of overlapping connections that resemble mammalian

ocular dominance columns Ocular dominance columns are stripes of neurons in the visual cortex of certain mammals (including humans) that respond preferentially to input from one eye or the other. The columns span multiple cortical layers, and are laid out in a striped pa ...

. Using this system, she and her colleagues demonstrated the importance of

NMDA receptor The ''N''-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (also known as the NMDA receptor or NMDAR), is a glutamate receptor and ion channel found in neurons. The NMDA receptor is one of three types of ionotropic glutamate receptors, the other two being AMPA rece ...

s in development plasticity. She currently studies the molecular mechanisms that underlie the brain's response to visual experience. Her work is also relevant to understanding the mechanisms of schizophrenia and

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most comm ...

(Lou Gehrig's disease).Neonatal neuronal circuitry shows hyperexcitable disturbance in a mouse model of the adult-onset neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. van Zundert B, Peuscher MH, Hynynen M, Chen A, Neve RL, Brown RH Jr, Constantine-Paton M, Bellingham MC. J Neurosci. 2008 Oct 22;28(43):10864-74.

Personal life

She is married to Nobel laureate

H. Robert Horvitz Howard Robert Horvitz ForMemRS NAS AAA&S APS NAM (born May 8, 1947) is an American biologist best known for his research on the nematode worm ''Caenorhabditis elegans'', for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, to ...

References

External links

Constantine-Paton lab at MITMcGovern Institute for Brain Research
{{DEFAULTSORT:Constantine-Paton, Martha American women neuroscientists American neuroscientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Living people Cornell University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) American women academics 21st-century American women