Expanding neuroscientific understanding
The institute supports the far-ranging inquiries of its basic science and clinical researchers across all levels of nervous system function and disease from genetic expression and brain circuitry to affect and behavior. Drawing on the expertise of psychologists and other scholars from non-biological disciplines, researchers are also working to correlate neural activity to complex human experiences such as our ability to perceive meaning. Driving this commitment to "discovery for discovery's sake" is the understanding that today's insights will be the building blocks, in often unforeseen ways, for the leading therapies of decades to come.
Current research by NIS members include:
- Exploring the role of endogenous neuronal and glial stem cells in normal and pathological conditions with a specific focus on their role played in learning and in functional recovery from injury
- Exploring the role of neuronal migration, axon path finding, myelination and synapse formation and maintenance in development, regeneration and disease processes such as multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and developmental disorders
- Reconstructing the three-dimensional architecture of neuronal networks in specific brain areas during development, normal homeostasis and affective disorders
- Understanding attention and higher intellectual functions in normal states and disease as part of an effort to understand the basis of autism and affective disorders
- Decoding the signals neurons and neuronal circuits use to communicate
- Identifying the early indicators of neurological and psychiatric diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, mood disorders, brain tumors and others to develop more effective pre-symptomatic diagnosis and care
- Characterizing common mechanism of neurodegeneration such as apoptotic cell death, mitochondrial dysfunction and protein misfolding, degradation and mistrafficking
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