Name: Dr. Lora B Sweeney

Position: Assistant Professor

Research Description:

Evolution, Development, and Function of Motor Circuits

Movement is fundamental to nearly every animal behavior: to escape predators, to eat and breathe, animals must move. The Sweeney Group aims to define the molecular, cellular and neural circuit components that underlie differences in motor behavior, and to explore how such differences arise during an organism’s development.


The group uses the Xenopus frog to address these fundamental questions. The frog undergoes metamorphosis, transitioning from a swimming tadpole to a walking frog during development. The Sweeney Group exploits this transition and categorizes, compares and manipulates frog neurons at each stage. This allows the scientists to map variations in cellular properties and neural circuit structure onto differences in motor behavior.


Knowledge about such cell-circuit-behavior relationships in the frog will provide a basis for comparing motor circuits between tetrapods, understanding how motor circuits evolved from swimming to walking during evolution, and pinpointing how motor circuits break down in movement disorders.

Current Projects:
Single cell sequencing of tadpole versus frog neurons 

Viral tracing of neural circuits for swimming and walking

Multiphoton imaging of calcium dynamics over metamorphosis

Lab Memberships

Kintner Lab (Post-doc, Alumni)
Sweeney Group (Principal Investigator/Director)

Contact Information

Address:
Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria)
Klosterneuburg
Austria

Email: lora.sweeney@ist.ac.at
Web Page: https://ist.ac.at/en/research/sweeney-group/