I will deliver a talk at the CNR Institute of Neuroscience, Pisa on December 4th, at 11 am. Here is the link and below is the abstract:

Balance of excitation and inhibition (E/I) plays a key role in refining neural circuit development and plasticity and is disrupted in many neurodevelopmental disorders including Rett syndrome (RTT). The functional effects of Mecp2, a gene responsible for RTT, on synaptic E/I and circuit-level computations, and the role of MeCP2 in inhibitory neuron subtypes, are unresolved. Here, by analyzing visual cortical responses using in vivo electrophysiology and imaging tools, we show that the nature and level of specific forms of inhibition is significantly altered in mouse models of RTT suggesting that these neurons contributes crucially to the cell-specific and circuit-wide deficits of RTT. Administration of human recombinant IGF-1 cell-type specifically restores such deficits demonstrating a cell-type specific and mechanism-based therapeutic role for rhIGF1 in treating RTT.