Allison Schaser

Active Mentor - currently hosting PULSe students for laboratory rotations and recruiting PULSe students into the laboratory; serves on preliminary exam committees

Current Research Interests:

Allison Schaser, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology from Miami University in Ohio and a master’s degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015 and recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Neurology department at Oregon Health & Science University focused on understanding the pathophysiology of age-related synucleinopathies like Parkinson disease (PD) and Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). In her research, she uses advanced imaging tools and an alpha-synuclein fibril seeding approach to study protein aggregation in a mouse model of PD and DLB. Her lab specializes in merging clinical issues, animal behavior, and exploration of pathology in the cranial sensorimotor system to characterize and treat voice, communication, and swallowing deficits in age-related synucleinopathies. Allison was president of the Portland-based non-profit Women in Science Portland while she completed her postdoctoral fellowship and is passionate about continuing her work building supportive networks to promote retention and career development opportunities for women in the sciences at Purdue.

Selected Publications:

Schaser, A.J., Stackhouse, T.L., Weston, L.J. et al. Trans-synaptic and retrograde axonal spread of Lewy pathology following pre-formed fibril injection in an in vivo A53T alpha-synuclein mouse model of synucleinopathy. acta neuropathol commun 8, 150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40478-020-01026-0

Schaser AJ*, Osterberg VR*, Dent SE, Stackhouse TL, Wakeham CM, Boutros SW, Weston LJ, Owen N, Weissman TA, Luna E, Raber J, Luk KC, McCullough AK, Woltjer RL, Unni VK. Alpha-synuclein is a DNA binding protein that modulates DNA repair with implications for Lewy body disorders.Sci Rep. 2019; 9(1):10919. PMCID: PMC6662836

Schaser AJ, Unni VK, López CS. Utilizing Correlated Light and Electron Microscopy to Examine Alpha-Synuclein Pathology in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease. Microsc. Microanal. Proceedings. 2019; 25, S2, 1132 – 1133, ABSTRACT.

Schaser AJ, Ciucci MR, Connor NP. Cross-activation and detraining effects of tongue exercise in aged rats. Behav Brain Res. 2016; 297(1): 285-96. PMCID: PMC4679533

Ciucci MR, Schaser AJ, Russell JA. Exercise-induced rescue of tongue function without striatal dopamine sparing in a rat neurotoxin model of Parkinson disease. Behav Brain Res. 2013; 252(9):239-45. PMCID: PMC3742558 Google Scholar Profile http://bit.ly/SchaserPublications