For animals such as mice, olfaction is their primary route to pick up social information, whether that’s identifying the dominant male in a group or figuring out the reproductive status of females. In turn, these signals can influence animals’ behavior and physiology. Pheromones in male urine, for instance, can trigger early puberty in mice. While […]
The factors that lead to preterm birth, which affects nearly 10% of pregnancies worldwide, are poorly understood. Its effects, however, are known. Among them: cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, and visual and hearing impairments. In order to better understand the cause of preterm birth, researchers need to better understand the uterine contractions patterns responsible for initiating […]
Denise Head, PhD, professor of psychological and brain sciences, and Jeffrey Zacks, PhD, associate chair and professor of psychological and brain sciences, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, won a five-year $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for work on aging and development. Originally published on The Source.
Guoyan Zhao, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, received a $433,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to apply a cutting-edge imaging technology to study subcellular features of brain tissue from Alzheimer’s patients. Read more.
Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) of proteins, when tethered to folded domains, function either as flexible tails or as linkers between domains. Most IDRs are composed of a mixture of oppositely charged residues. Recent measurements of tethered polyampholytes have shown that arginine- and lysine-rich sequences tend to behave very differently from one another. In a paper […]
Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine, as well as professor of biomedical engineering and of economics, received a five-year $2.3 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Neuronal mechanisms of good-based economic decisions.” Originally published on The […]
Vijay K. Samineni, PhD, assistant professor of anesthesiology at the Washington University School of Medicine, received a five-year $2.34 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Neural mechanisms underlying IC/BPS.” Originally published on The Source.
Mark A. Rutherford, PhD, assistant professor of otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research on the pore-forming and auxiliary subunit molecular anatomy of AMPA-type glutamate receptors in the cochlea […]
In order to understand healthy neurodevelopment — and the threats to that health — researchers need a more comprehensive understanding of how the brain grows throughout childhood and young adulthood. To that end, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $753,181 grant to Deanna Barch, PhD, chair and professor of psychological and brain […]
Kristin Van Engen, PhD, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences and of linguistics, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a $433,242 National Science Foundation grant to support research into why some speakers are more difficult to understand than others and how listeners adjust to unfamiliar accents. Unlike […]
Naresha Saligrama, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology and of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine, is part of a team led by Lisa Wagar, of the University of California, Irvine, that has received a multiyear, multi-million-dollar grant through Wellcome Leap to use human tonsil organoids to study immune responses. Originally published on […]
Aaron DiAntonio, MD, PhD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Developmental Biology; Joseph Bloom, PhD, assistant professor of genetics; and Jeffrey Milbrandt, MD, PhD, the James S. McDonnell Professor and head of the Department of Genetics, all at the School of Medicine, received a two-year $300,000 grant from the ALS Finding a Cure and […]
Carl F. Craver, PhD, a professor of philosophy and of philosophy-neuroscience-psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a grant of $282,603 from the National Science Foundation. The NSF grant will fund a new project titled “Time and Episodic Memory: Neuropsychology Meets Philosophy.” This will build on Craver’s previous investigations with R. […]
The Whitehall Foundation has awarded a three-year $225,000 grant to Tristan Qingyun Li, PhD, assistant professor of neuroscience and of genetics at Washington University School of Medicine. The funding will go to investigate the function of microglia, immune cells that reside in the brain and perform myriad critical functions during development, injury and disease. Microglia were once thought […]
Four faculty members in the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis — Yao Chen, Thomas Papouin, Jason Yi and Guoyan Zhao — have been awarded their first R01 grants through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This funding will support research critical to understanding the cellular and molecular processes occurring during neurodevelopment and […]
Geoffrey Goodhill, PhD, professor of developmental biology and of neuroscience at the Washington University School of Medicine, has received a two-year $675,000 grant to enhance the capabilities of light field microscopy for brain imaging. The funds, awarded by the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will […]
Daniel Scott Marcus, PhD, professor of radiology at the School of Medicine, received a one-year $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “A high performance research image repository (RIR) for the Washington University Center of High Performance Computing.” Originally published on The Source.
Daniel Kerschensteiner, MD, professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, of biomedical engineering and of neuroscience the School of Medicine, received a five-year $2 million grant from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)for research titled “Synaptic organization and function of retinal interneurons and downstream visual pathways.” Originally published on The Source.
Paul J. Shaw, PhD, professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, received a one-year $2.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Bidirectional interactions between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease: Functional dissection of the brain transcriptome in humans and drosophila.” Originally published on The Source.
Steven J. Mennerick, PhD, the John P. Feighner Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and a professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $2.3 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “GABAA receptor populations in hippocampus and thalamus.” Originally published on The […]
Cyrus A. Raji, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiology and of neurology at the School of Medicine, received a one-year $2.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Neuroinflammation and Alzheimer’s disease imaging biomarkers in midlife obesity.” Originally published on The Source.
Zhoufeng Chen, PhD, the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology, and professor of developmental biology, of medicine and of psychiatry, all at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Extramural […]
Naresha Saligrama, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at the School of Medicine, received a three-year $1.1 million grant from the Children’s Discovery Institute for research titled “Defining the role of adaptive immunity in pediatric-onset multiple sclerosis.” Originally published on The Source.
Aristeidis Sotiras, PhD, assistant professor of radiology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Advanced machine learning algorithms that integrate multi-modal neuroimaging to quantify the heterogeneity in Alzheimer’s disease.” Originally published on The Source.
Robi D. Mitra, PhD, professor of genetics and the Alvin Goldfarb Distinguished Professor of Computational Biology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $1.6 million grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Expanding opportunities in genomic research for underrepresented students.” Originally published on The Source.
Marco Colonna, MD, the Robert Rock Belliveau Professor of Pathology and Immunology at the School of Medicine, received a four-year $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for diabetes, digestive and kidney diseases extramural research, and a one-year $1.6 million grant from the National Institute […]
Adam Joseph Bloom, assistant professor of genetics and of anesthesiology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $2.9 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his research titled “Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders.” Originally published on The Source.
The National Institute of Mental Health, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded James Fitzpatrick, PhD a $600,000 grant to purchase a Zeiss LSM 980 Airyscan 2 microscope platform for the Washington University Center for Cellular Imaging (WUCCI). The instrument will complement the existing optical microscopes at WUCCI by expanding super-resolution imaging to a […]
The James S. McDonnell Foundation has awarded $750,000 to Henry “Roddy” Roediger, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. The three-year award will fund the Collective Memory Collaborative, led by Roediger and co-principal investigator James Wertsch, the David R. Francis Distinguished Professor in anthropology […]
Shiming Chen, PhD, professor of ophthalmology in the John F. Hardesty, MD, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, has received a 2021 Stein Innovation Award from Research to Prevent Blindness. The $300,000 award provides flexible funding to scientists engaged in research to improve the understanding of the visual system […]
Andrew Yoo, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology at the School of Medicine, has received a two-year $486,844 grant from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston for his project titled “Investigation of neurodegenerative pathways in directly reprogrammed, XDP patient neurons”; and a two-year $345,000 grant from the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund for his project titled “Neuronal subtype-specific modeling of Alzheimer’s […]
The coronavirus pandemic has emphasized the importance of vaccines, particularly for the elderly, who have been disproportionately impacted by the virus. However, a decline in immune response as well as inflammation that accompanies aging require a booster to improve the immune response. Jai Rudra, PhD, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of […]
MRI-guided focused ultrasound combined with microbubbles can open the blood-brain barrier and allow therapeutic drugs to reach the diseased brain location under the guidance of MRI. It is a promising technique that has been shown safe in patients with various brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and glioblastoma. Chen While MRI […]
Kristen Kroll, PhD, professor of developmental biology at the School of Medicine, has received a four-year $2.09 million R01 research grant from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her project titled “The cis-regulatory grammar and epigenetic control of human interneuron progenitor specification.” Originally published at The […]
Cyrus Raji, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiology and of neurology at the School of Medicine, received a three-year $2.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his research titled “Neuroinflammation and Alzheimer’s Disease Imaging Biomarkers in Midlife Obesity.” Originally published on The Source.
The Office of Naval Research has awarded Barani Raman, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, an $851,320 grant for research to determine just how sensitive locusts’ noses are when it comes to explosives — and how well researchers can interpret what the insects are […]
Macy Sprunger, a graduate student in Meredith Jackrel’s lab in the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, won a three-year $136,560 National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The award supports Sprunger’s project “Defining the Molecular Drivers and Modulators of MATR3 Proteinopathy […]
Brainstem glioma is often diagnosed in children and young adults and has a low survival rate. A multidisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis developed a technique that delivered a therapeutic agent to the gliomas using focused ultrasound with very promising results. Dezhuang Ye, a doctoral student in the lab of Hong Chen, PhD, […]
Jianmin Cui, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and Po wei (Billy) Kang, an MD/PhD student at the School of Medicine who conducts research in Cui’s lab, led an international team that revealed new details on how two biomolecules modulate opening and closing of the KCNQ1 potassium channel. This channel […]
Three Washington University in St. Louis researchers have received Young Investigator Grants from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. The foundation is committed to alleviating the suffering caused by mental illness by supporting research that will lead to advances and breakthroughs in scientific research. The $70,000 grants help junior investigators launch innovative basic, translational and clinical research […]
Jeffrey M. Zacks, associate chair and professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences and professor of radiology at the School of Medicine, received a four-year $250,000 grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to study event cognition “in the wild.” This project will take the research into the world, where people actually […]
Ganesh M. Babulal, assistant professor of neurology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $3,984,843 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Institute On Aging for research titled “The Impact of Depression and Preclinical Alzheimer Disease on Driving Among Older Adults.” This study will investigate how depression, preclinical Alzheimer’s disease and antidepressant […]
Leopoldo J. Cabassa, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research at the Brown School, has received a five-year $2.2 million training grant renewal from the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This training program previously led by Enola Proctor, builds upon the center’s 25-year history of successfully […]
Jeffrey Zacks, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a nearly $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in support of a multiyear project titled “Improving Everyday Memory in Healthy Aging and Early Alzheimer’s Disease.” Read more.
Todd Braver, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a $432,938 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support a project titled “Healthy Aging and the Cost of Cognitive Effort.” Read more.
Gilbert Gallardo, assistant professor of neurology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year, $1.96 million grant from the National Institute On Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Engineering anti-tau intrabodies that reduce tauopathy by either the proteasome, lysosome, or chaperone mediated autophagy.” Read more.
Lawrence H. Snyder, MD, PhD, professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine and of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a five-year $2.55 million grant from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Interhemispheric communication underlying bimanual and eye-hand coordination.” Read more.
Mayssa Mokalled, assistant professor of developmental biology, has received a five-year, $1.93 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her project titled “Mechanisms of glial bridging and neurogenesis during spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish.” Read more.
Victoria Church, a postdoctoral research scholar in the lab of Andrew S. Yoo, associate professor of developmental biology at the School of Medicine, received a three-year, $165,000 postdoctoral fellowship award from the William N. & Bernice E. Bumpus Foundation for her project titled “Modeling PD with patient-derived directly reprogrammed neurons.” Read more.
Valeria Cavalli, professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, received a $300,000 Stein Innovation Award from Research to Prevent Blindness to explore ways to support the survival or regeneration of cells in the eye in order to prevent blindness caused by glaucoma. Read more.