Dr. Rasha Elghaba

Rasha originally graduated with an honors degree in Medicine and General Surgery from Mansoura University, Egypt, in 2005. After successfully finishing a Master’s degree in Medical Physiology from Mansoura University, Rasha joined the University of Sheffield to pursue her Ph.D. in Neuroscience. Rasha’s doctoral research was focused on defining the activity of, and interactions between, low-threshold spiking (LTS) interneurons and cholinergic interneurons in the striatum. As part of this, she studied the effects of GABA, acetylcholine, nitric oxide, and opiate peptides on striatal neurons. Rasha used many in vitro electrophysiological techniques, such as whole-cell, cell-attached, and perforated-patch recordings, as well as optogenetic manipulations of interneuron activity. After finishing her Ph.D. in 2015, Rasha continued with her work on striatal microcircuits as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Enrico Bracci at the University of Sheffield. In October 2017, Rasha was appointed as a Lecturer in the Department of Medical Physiology at Mansoura University, where she was involved in diverse teaching and research activities. In 2022, Rasha was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Sheffield, where she used calcium imaging to investigate the effects of various sodium channel blockers on the transmission of pain signals in neurons of the dorsal root ganglion.

Rasha joined the Magill Group at the Unit in January 2023, working as part of a Collaborative Research Network supported by Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s. Rasha is using photometry and electrophysiology in behaving mice to characterise the signalling dynamics of dopamine and other neuromodulators in the striatum in health and experimental Parkinsonism.