ASD Researchers at UNC

Professor/Department of Psychiatry, UNC School of Medicine

Sheryl Moy, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the UNC School of Medicine.  Her research addresses genetic factors in susceptibility to neurodevelopmental disorders, and preclinical efficacy testing with novel therapeutic agents, using mouse models for psychiatric and neurological conditions. Current studies in the Moy laboratory utilize knockout or transgenic mouse lines with disruptions of NMDA, serotonin, or other signaling pathways as models of human clinical disorders.

With Drs. Gary Duncan and Beverly Koller, she is using mice with reduced NMDA receptor levels as a model of the intrinsic glutamatergic hypofunction associated with schizophrenia. This collaborative group has already determined behavioral and pharmacological profiles in the model, and demonstrated alterations in neural circuitry underlying abnormal social behavior and deficient sensorimotor gating. The aims for Dr. Moy’s present project include characterization of the time course for emergence of schizophrenia-like phenotypes and the evaluation of early intervention with typical and atypical antipsychotic compounds. A second line of research in her laboratory focuses on the C58/J inbred strain as a model for aberrant repetitive behavior and social deficits, relevant to symptoms in autism.