By Michelle Jaffee
Brandon Zielinski, M.D., Ph.D., is chief of pediatric neurology at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine and a UF AI initiative scholar. His research aims to illuminate structure-function relationships in developing brain networks, both in health and in neurological disorders affecting children, with a particular focus on autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions.
An investigator of basic, clinical, and translational research, Zielinski is an associate professor of pediatric neurology and director of UF’s Developmental Network Neurobiology Lab.
Q. What inspired you to focus on this area of neuroscience?
A. We are looking for fundamental ideas that have a high potential for real-world clinical impact. I see all kinds of kids with various types of neurologic diseases. I believe the potential for impact is much greater if we can develop new tools to see the pathology in brain networks and measure the response to therapies.
Q. How do you envision your research advancing neurological disease treatments?
A. Currently our field treats one symptom with one medicine and another symptom with another medicine. Attacking or addressing network dysfunction is going to be a big story in the future — I believe the root of many neurodevelopmental pathologies is really the large-scale brain network. Network therapeutics are the future.
Q. What’s the most exciting discovery you’ve made so far?
A. For me, it’s three tied together. First, back in graduate school, I used an emerging technique to show how and where early-stage language sounds are mapped onto a very specific region of the anterior temporal lobe — essentially that’s where environmental sounds take on speech-like characteristics. We were able to show in a living human where early language is encoded. The ability to see the anatomy of brain function in a living human was transformational for me. Then, during residency, we developed a technique using standard clinical MRIs to show that brain networks themselves exhibit patterns of developmental change throughout childhood and could be roots of pathology. Lastly, over time, I realized that one of the main stumbling blocks in the field of autism for decades is that no one knew where in the brain autism lives. People are studying regions, they’re studying cells, they’re studying proteins, they’re studying genes. We came at it from a completely different perspective and said, we think there’s something to this network-level pathology issue. So, we showed that the substrate of autism spectrum disorder, at least symptomatically, seems to be living in large-scale brain networks. And that autism is distributed in the brain, but not randomly distributed — it’s all over, but it’s not everywhere.
Q. What makes working in your lab different than other research environments?
A. We are staunch collaborators. We have several lifetimes’ worth of data already. We have an open-door policy in terms of idea making, but also data sharing. And I think one other element that’s really unique to our lab is that we have trainees of all levels — from high school all the way up to clinical residents as well as senior postdocs and junior faculty. We all learn from each other. Since I am also a practicing physician, we have access to the clinical impacts of the research we’re doing: Our students and trainees get to rotate in the hospital, enroll real patients in real clinical studies, and do the scanning. They get to meet the participants and see them and work with them through the process, and then analyze the data at the end.
Q. What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
A. Being outside for anything — anywhere, at any time, with friends and family. We’re big sailors and divers. I grew up in the west, and we love the mountains — hiking, camping, biking, skiing. I also love listening to and playing music; I play bass guitar and acoustic guitar.