Wim Crusio

Wim E. Crusio is a Dutch scientist working on the genetics of behavior and the nervous system. He is "directeur de recherche" (research director, a job title for a senior researcher) with the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Talence, France.
Education and career
Crusio got in 1979 a master's degree and then in 1984 a PhD from the Radboud University Nijmegen. He performed research in behavior genetics, plant taxonomy, and vegetation science for his master's degree. His revision of the genus Anubias continues to generate interest. His work in plant taxonomy continued for several more years. He wrote about the genus Samolus. In 1986 he described a new species of the Aroid genus Lagenandra, L.dewitii. Crusio studied the inheritance of the behavior of mice exploring a new environment for his PhD He also looked at the effects on this behavior of not being able to smell (anosmia). He used quantitative-genetic methods such as the diallel cross for this. Crusio worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Heidelberg from 1984 to 1987. This was supported by a NATO Science Fellowship and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. Crusio spent the year 1988 in Paris (France) supported by a fellowship from the Fyssen Foundation. He returned to Heidelberg as a senior research scientist. He was then recruited as "charge de recherche" by the CNRS. He worked at first in an institute of the Paris Descartes University (Paris V). He was promoted to research director in 1994. In 1997 he moved to the CNRS campus in Orleans. Crusio became professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2000 and returned to the CNRS in 2005. He became a group leader in the "Centre de Neurosciences Integratives et Cognitives" in Talence, a suburb of Bordeaux. He is currently adjunct director of the "Institut de Neurosciences Cognitives et Integratives d'Aquitaine".
Research
Exploratory behavior
Animals will often explore a new environment if they have the chance. Crusio thought that this would be favorable: it would make it possible for animals to find water, food, etc. However, moving around in unfamiliar spaces is dangerous. Such stabilizing selection would leave genetic traces. Crusio did indeed find such traces for mice and for Paradise fish.
Hippocampal mossy fibers
In Heidelberg, Crusio became interested in the inheritance of variations in the neuroanatomy of the mouse hippocampus. He studied the intra- and infrapyramidal mossy fiber (IIPMF) projections in this brain area. Crusio showed that about 50% of the variation found between different inbred mouse strains in the sizes of their IIPMF were due to genetic differences. Herbert Schwegler and Hans-Peter Lipp had found that these variations are correlated with learning a two-way active avoidance task. Animals with smaller projections learned much faster than animals with larger IIPMF. Together with Schwegler and Lipp, Crusio showed that an inverse correlation could be found for spatial learning in a radial arm maze task. Animals with larger IIPMF learned better in this task. Injecting mouse pups with thyroxine results in larger IIPMF projections. When mice from a strain with small IIPMF projections zere treated in this way, they could learn better in the radial maze. Crusio and his collaborators think that this correlation is causal. Not everybody believes this.
Mouse model of depression
Mice that suffer unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS) show symptoms that look like depression in humans. Researchers were thinking that deficits in hippocampal neurogenesis (the birth of new nerve cells) might be the cause of depression. Crusio and collaborators did experiments to look at changes in behavior and neurogenesis in stressed mice. They showed large changes in levels of aggression, anxiety, depressive-like behaviors, and learning. At the same time, there was a large drop in neurogenesis. The results dependent very much on the strain and sex. There did not appear to be a clear-cut correlation between the different changes. They concluded that their data do not support the idea that deficits in hippocampal neurogenesis alone are the cause of depression. However, they do not disprove this hypothesis either.
Mouse model of autism
Crusio has recently looked into the possibility that FMR1 knockout mice can perhaps be used as a model for autism. The Fragile X syndrome is caused by a deficiency of the FMR1 gene. Patients often show autistic symptoms. A good mouse model for the Fragile X syndrome is available because there are mice in which the Fmr1 gene has been changed so that it does not work any more. A review of the work that has been done with these mice in many different laboratorie did indeed show that these animals have autistic-like symptoms. For example, they show changes in social behavior and this is a key symptom of autism.
Editorial activities
Crusio is the founding editor-in-chief of Genes, Brain and Behavior. This journal started in 2002 and has an impact factor of 4.061. This ranks it 63rd out of 237 listed journals in the Neurosciences category and 6th out of 48 listed journals in the Behavioral sciences category. He and his co-editors developed standards for the publication of mouse mutant studies for this journal. These standards are gradually being accepted in the field. Since 2017, Crusio is editor-in-chief of Behavioral and Brain Functions. He is also an academic editor of PLoS ONE and served as associate editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1991-2008) and The ScientificWorldJournal (2002-2011). Crusio serves or has served on the editorial boards of Behavioral and Brain Functions, Behavior Genetics (1991-1995), Behavioural Brain Research (1997-2007), BMC Neuroscience, BMC Research Notes, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Journal of Visualized Experiments, Molecular Brain, Neurogenetics (1998-2006), and Physiology and Behavior. He edited special issues for the journals Behavior Genetics, Behavioural Brain Research, Physiology and Behavior (with Robert Gerlai), Hippocampus (with Aryeh Routtenberg), and Brain Research Bulletin (with Catherine Belzung and Robert Gerlai). He also edited a handbook on molecular genetic techniques for behavioral neuroscience together with Robert Gerlai. He is currently editing the Cambridge Handbooks in Behavioural Genetics, a series of handbooks published by Cambridge University Press. The first volume, Behavioral Genetics of the Mouse, will appear in 2013.
Community service
Crusio was one of two co-founders of the International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society in 1996 He served as member-at-large of the executive committee, treasurer, and president (1998-2001) of this society. He received from this society in 2011 the "Distinguished Service Award" for exceptional contributions to the field of behavioral neurogenetics. Crusio also served on the executive committees of the Behavior Genetics Association (from which he resigned in protest to Glayde Whitney's 1995 presidential address), the European Brain and Behaviour Society, and the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society (IBNS). Crusio has been a President of the Dutch Behavior Genetics Contact Group. He has been a member of several program committees for scientific meetings, most notably the 8th and 10th World Congresses of Psychiatric Genetics and the 2008, 2009 (co-chair), 2010 (chair), and 2011 (chair) Annual Meetings of the IBNS.