Ph.D. (Psychophysiology) 1985 Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
Dr. Malkova's laboratory is interested in developmental neurobiology of cognitive functions and socioemotional behavior. More specifically, her research concentrates on the neurochemical and neuroanatomical substrates for these functions and on the assessment of their long-term development after early brain insults in nonhuman primates. The understanding of neural bases of these functions is vital for the approach to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, and at the same time is relevant to an entire spectrum of behavioral disorders that emerge as a result of a host of neurological disturbances in children (epilepsy, cerebral palsy, cortical dysgenesis, etc.). Dr. Malkova has recently discovered that the socioemotional processes are permanently impaired after neonatal damage to limbic structures. The behavioral impairment proved to be even greater in newborns than in adults with the same damage, indicating that these lesions interfere with the development of socioemotional processes more than with their retention once they have developed. Significantly, the socioemotional disorder produced by early limbic-tissue damage in monkeys closely resembles childhood autism in both its behavioral manifestation and developmental time-course. This research has thus made a major contribution toward unraveling the brain pathology that causes this disorder.
One of Dr. Malkova's goals is to investigate the role of the medial temporal lobe structures and in particular the amygdala and its specific subdivisions for socioemotional behavior and to identify the critical development periods and neural triggers for developmental abnormalitites in an animal model of autism. In her studies, Dr, Malkova utilizes focal drug application into discrete brain areas to produce either transitory effects or permanent lesions. The early insults into an immature animal brain include either pharmacologically induced imbalances in neurotransmission or axon-sparing excitotoxic lesions within circumscribed regions of the amygdala. Another method involves early prolonged seizures in medial temporal networks. An important facet of her studies is the analysis of the extent to which socioemotional disturbances produced by various anatomically site-specific insults are accompanied by impairment in cognitive functions. Cognitive functions that are being studied in Dr. MalkovaÕs laboratory include visual, crossmodal (auditory-visual) and spatial memory.