New Fralin Biomedical Research Institute neuroscientist decodes developmental disorders
Assistant Professor Meike van der Heijden studies the cerebellum — a brain region that supports the development of many behaviors.
Meike van der Heijden, who joined the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC as an assistant professor, investigates the cerebellum’s role in a wide range of motor, cognitive and social behaviors. Photo by Clayton Metz for Virginia Tech.
Nestled beside the brain stem, the cerebellum is a fist-sized ball densely packed with thin, parallel grooves called folia. While it makes up less than 20 percent of the human brain’s volume, it’s home to more than half its neurons.
For years, researchers thought this brain region only controlled fine movements, balance, and coordination. But research led by Meike van der Heijden — the newest faculty research team leader to join the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC — is challenging that dogma. Her work shows that a broken cerebellum causes many different neural disorders.
“The cerebellum is fascinating. It has a clear, homogenous, and repetitive circuitry. Yet we’re discovering how it is essential for a wide range of motor, cognitive, and social behaviors,” said Van der Heijden, a developmental systems neuroscientist specializing in cerebellar function. She also holds a faculty appointment in the College of Science’s School of Neuroscience and will join the research institute's Center for Neurobiology Research.
Her laboratory, which opened in January, studies how cerebellar circuits mature during brain development. Her team decodes healthy and abnormal signaling patterns associated with developing behaviors, hoping to one day find therapeutic targets and develop approaches to address the abnormal signaling that may occur in a variety of conditions.
One disorder she studies is dystonia — a movement disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions and affects 250,000 Americans, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Last year, Van der Heijden received National Institutes of Health funding to study the disease’s pathophysiology.
Children and adolescents who develop dystonia are otherwise healthy until they develop uncontrollable muscle spasms, tremors, shaking, and abnormal twisting. There is no cure, and treatments are limited to medications or botulinum toxin injections designed to inhibit overactive muscles.
“By the time we see behavioral changes in dystonia patients, it’s too late to intervene,” Van der Heijden said. “My dream is to find early neural markers for cerebellar diseases, like dystonia, giving us a chance to reverse deficits by mimicking neurotypical developmental conditions.”
Her latest research linked patterns in nerve cell electrical activity in the cerebellum with dystonia, ataxia, and tremor in mouse models. Van der Heijden and her colleagues identified disease-specific patterns of nerve impulse — action potential — or spiking activity, demonstrating that the cerebellum can generate normal and multiple dysfunctional patterns. The researchers then used optogenetics, a technique that uses light signals to control the electrical activity in specific genetically altered cells, to recreate specific spike patterns and found corresponding motor impairments.
“This was an exciting discovery because we showed that spiking patterns aren’t just biomarkers for movement disorders. They actively contribute to disease phenotypes,” Van der Heijden said. “For dystonia, it’s almost as though the neural code gets stuck in an immature state. Understanding when these developmental trajectories go awry may help reveal the basis for new therapeutics.”
Van der Heijden has presented her research about neural activity as an invited speaker at prestigious conferences, including the Cerebellum Gordon Research Conference, the International Dystonia Symposium, and the International Congress for Ataxia Research.
She also published an important study last year in Nature Communications examining how manipulating specific cerebellum cells during development affects social and motor learning. The study showed that different cells in the cerebellum have specific roles in movements and social interactions throughout life. The findings also revealed that the brain can compensate for some but not all signaling problems caused by early damage to different cells in the cerebellum.
Previously, she completed her postdoctoral training and doctoral degree in neuroscience at the Baylor College of Medicine, studying how brain stem development allows breathing at birth. Originally from the Netherlands, she obtained her undergraduate degree in psychobiology from the University of Amsterdam.
Van der Heijden has received several awards, including the 2021 Leading Edge Fellow Award and from Baylor College of Medicine, the Rush and Helen Record Fellow in Neuroscience Award, a McNair Education Collaborative Teaching Fellow Award, and an Outstanding Educator Award. She has authored over 25 peer-reviewed articles.
Van der Heijden says her new appointments at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and School of Neuroscience, where she will teach two courses a year, perfectly blend her passion for research and teaching.
“I love teaching and want to contribute to science through my lab’s discoveries and by educating the next generation of scientists,” Van der Heijden said.
