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SHARON CROOK Assistant Professor Department of Mathematics and Statistics and School of Life Sciences Ph.D., 1996, University of Maryland, College Park Send e-mail to Sharon.Crook@asu.edu http://math.la.asu.edu/~crook

Research Interests and Current Projects:

One of the major challenges in neuroscience is to understand the biophysical mechanisms and algorithms underlying neural computation. In my primary research area of computational neuroscience, I use mathematical models, analysis, and computer simulations to examine the behavior of neurons and neural networks and their role in neural computation. Another major challenge in biomedical research is to understand how the information encoded by the genome determines an organism's function. Recent technological advances have increased the capacity for generating data at the level of the genome; however, using this data to understand function requires interdisciplinary collaborations. I am interested in developing multi-scale models for biological processes that link genetic information with neurophysiology and function.

Cortical Dynamics: One of my research areas involves the use of coupled oscillator models to study the dynamics of cortical oscillations. These models provide insight into the mechanisms that contribute to different types of cortical behavior such as synchrony, traveling waves of oscillations, or other phase shifts between oscillators that are computationally significant.

Activity-Dependent Mechanisms: In another area of focus, we use modeling studies to understand the mechanisms underlying changes in neuron or network behavior due to trauma, rehabilitation, plasticity or development. Our current research focuses on several related topics including 1) how alterations in dendritic morphology, synapse distributions and membrane properties affect cell dynamics and 2) the roles of synaptic activity, intracellular calcium, and neuromodulators in plasticity and development.

Neuroinformatics: I am also contributing to an international effort to create an extensible markup language (XML) application for neuroscience. MorphML provides a common standard for neuroanatomical data and for information about the biophysical properties of membranes and is currently used by down-stream software applications for experimental data exchange and for the specification of neuronal models.

Selected Publications | CV (PDF)

Qi, W and S Crook. 2004. Tools for neuroinformatic data exchange: An XML application for neuronal morphology data. Neurocomputing 58-60:1091-1095.

Eaton, CD, S Crook, G Cummins and GA Jacobs. 2004. Modeling ion channels from the cricket cercal sensory system. Neurocomputing 58-60:409-415

Cummins, GI, SM Crook, AG Dimitrov, T Ganje, GA Jacobs and JP Miller. 2003. Structural and biophysical mechanisms underlying dynamic sensitivity of primary sensory interneurons in the cricket cercal sensory system. Neurocomputing 52:45-52.

Crook, S, J Miller and G Jacobs. 2002. Modeling frequency encoding in the cricket cercal sensory system. Neurocomputing 44:769-773.

Crook, SM, GB Ermentrout and JM Bower. 1998. Spike frequency adaptation affects the synchronization properties of cortical networks. Neural Computation 10:837-854.

Crook, SM, GB Ermentrout and JM Bower. 1998. Dendritic and synaptic effects in systems of coupled cortical oscillators. Journal of Computational Neuroscience 5:315-329.

Crook, SM, GB Ermentrout, MC Vanier and JM Bower. 1997. The role of axonal delay in the synchronization of networks of coupled cortical oscillators. Journal of Computational Neuroscience 4:161-172.