Molecular, imaging and sophisticated viral delivery techniques are used to investigate the coding and non-coding genes that regulate neuronal function. This work includes: (i) identifying the changes in gene expression that occur in neuronal cells exposed to stress or disease causing agent; (ii) developing viral vector systems optimized to study neuronal function; (iii) developing stem cell and induced pluripotent stem cell models of human disease conditions; (iv) how miRNAs and RNA binding proteins influence the expression of genes involved in the control of fundamental neuronal processes.