Neuroscience

Tao Hong, a second-year Ph.D. student in interdisciplinary materials science, and Hari Srinivasan, an incoming Ph.D. student in neuroscience, have been named to the 2022 cohort of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship Program for New Americans. This merit-based graduate award for immigrants and children of immigrants provides 30 fellows annually with up to $90,000 in funding to support their graduate studies. Read More

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded a $3.4 million grant to professor Thilo Womelsdorf to study the underlying mechanisms of action for potential drugs to regulate cognitive function and brain network activity affected in schizophrenia without debilitating side effects. Read More

Collaboration across seven laboratories, in five institutions, across three countries and led by Vanderbilt researchers addresses fundamental questions about the organization and evolution of the human brain. Est. reading time: 1.75 mins. Read More

Body-made cannabinoids that fine tune hunger signals in the brain have been mapped, with implications for helping those with deadly feeding-related illnesses Read More

Mikail Rubinov, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, computer science, psychiatry and psychology, has been awarded a four-year, $1.1 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to better understand the development and organization of brain networks, as well as their change in development and aging. Read More

Stressful events can rapidly modify how the brain responds to its environment and guides behaviors. These processes are relevant for neurotypical brain function and for the development of affective disorders and other psychiatric diseases, yet we have much to learn regarding the underlying molecular mechanisms. In this paper, researchers utilized pharmacologic, transgenic, and optogenetic tools to evaluate changes in brain function related to stress. Read More

Richard Sando, assistant professor of pharmacology, has been selected to receive a 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship, one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career researchers. Read More

Ege Kavalali and Heidi Hamm collaborated to discover a signaling pathway for how spontaneous release of neurotransmitters can be selectively regulated without disrupting evoked action potentials. Read More

Lisa Monteggia and her lab have identified how specific neurons in the hippocampus work to produce ketamine’s antidepressant action. Est. reading time: 2 mins. Read More

Lisa Monteggia leads discovery of the gene responsible for ketamine’s long-term effects with implications for antidepressant therapeutics. Est. reading time: 2.5 mins. Read More

Research led by Lisa Monteggia reveals that ketamine provides antidepressant effects by blocking key neural pathway. Est. reading time: 3 mins. Read More

By Jenna Somers During battle, many soldiers who become wounded find themselves at the mercy of another soldier’s medical training, hoping beyond hope that the soldier administering aid will remember their training well enough to save the wounded soldier’s life. Under such duress, recalling the details of medical training could be difficult, and the failure... Read More

By Jenna Somers During battle, many soldiers who become wounded find themselves at the mercy of another soldier’s medical training, hoping beyond hope that the soldier administering aid will remember their training well enough to save the wounded soldier’s life. Under such duress, recalling the details of medical training could be difficult, and the failure... Read More

A transdisciplinary team from Vanderbilt, Soterix Medical and the U.S. Army has advanced to the finals of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command’s xTechBOLT competition, where they will compete in November with four other teams for the $500,000 first-place prize. Read More

Richard Tsien, PhD, director of the Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center, will deliver the next web-based Discovery Lecture. Read More

Mukhtar Ahmed, Christian de Caestecker and Ian Macara, in collaboration with geneticists from Australia and Italy discover novel mutations in the Exocyst, providing new understanding of a critical cellular protein complex. Read More

The VBI recently marked its 20th anniversary, a span that has seen the institute’s wide-ranging missions—including administering the university’s Neuroscience Graduate Program, as well as postdoctoral training and community outreach—steadily coalesce under a single umbrella. Read More

The past decade in particular has been marked by a dramatic increase in music cognition inquiry, as about 100 laboratory groups around the world, including at Vanderbilt, are working across disciplines to understand music’s relationship to the brain, behavior and health, and to develop effective intervention strategies. Read More

VU319, an investigational drug product developed by Vanderbilt researchers, targets one of medicine’s most bedeviling challenges: improving memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Read More

New research on cognitive flexibility points to a small class of brain cells that support switching attention strategies when old strategies fail. Read More