The Raynor Cerebellum Project (RCP) aims to improve the lives of people with cerebellar disorders. Success will require exploration of new therapeutic approaches using preclinical models of cerebellar disorders. The function of the cerebellum is on full display during skilled behaviors. However, training preclinical models, such as rodents, to perform skilled behaviors usually is slow, laborious, and time-consuming. The RCP seeks to enable high-throughput training of mice to change the way skilled behaviors are studied in preclinical models, thus facilitating more rapid and powerful searches for new therapeutics for cerebellar disorders.
Our first effort funds the ‘Mouse Gym’ project, which takes advantage of machine learning approaches to automate training large numbers of rodents on a suite of complex skilled tasks while housed in standard long-term living environments. The ability to train a large number of animals in a similar fashion will promote well-powered and reproducible studies. The ‘Mouse Gym’ will also include sophisticated data analysis platforms for quantitative experimentation and data sharing. In this way, the ‘Mouse Gym’ will allow the scientific community to perform systematic, reproducible, and collaborative studies to advance the mission of the RCP.
The RCP has awarded funding of approximately $1M to a team of investigators led by Jason Christie and Ryan Williamson at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The Colorado team includes a leader in cerebellar function and disease modeling, alongside a complementary specialist in robotic engineering and high-throughput behavioral analysis.
