Browse wide-ranging research at the frontiers of neuroscience supported by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute grants, awards, and training fellowships.
Projects
Rejuvenating sleep to enhance brain resilience with age
Sleep is a critical behavioral state that fulfills essential needs for health, including clearing waste products (e.g., protein aggregates) from the brain. But sleep is not everlasting. As humans age, sleep quality strikingly deteriorates, and this decline is associated with dementias (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease).
Elucidating the role of alternative polyadenylation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
With an aging population, neurodegenerative disorders contribute increasingly to our global health burden with no cure or effective treatments. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are two neurodegenerative disorders that are distinct in clinical presentation (ALS impairs movement/breathing, whereas FTD impairs behavior/cognition).
Neuron-glia interactions in regulating protein aggregation in human cell models.
There is one characteristic of all neurodegenerative diseases: the accumulation and aggregation of abnormal proteins in the patient’s brain. These aggregations are thought to induce neuronal cell death and brain degeneration.
The origin of neurodegeneration: insight from a unique colonial chordate
With an aging population, neurodegenerative disorders contribute increasingly to our global health burden with no cure or effective treatments. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are two neurodegenerative disorders that are distinct in clinical presentation (ALS impairs movement/breathing, whereas FTD impairs behavior/cognition).
Determining the role of circadian transcriptional control in myelin-forming precursors in neurodegeneration
The causes of neurodegenerative disorders like multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer’s disease are incompletely understood, hindering our ability to gain precise diagnoses and design effective therapeutics. Understanding how the circadian rhythms regulate myelin-forming precursors will impart unique insights into normal and aberrant myelination and will have a positive impact on developing therapeutic strategies to restructure myelin.
In vivo selection for gene mutations that counteract photoreceptor degeneration
Massively parallel microwire arrays for deep brain stimulation
Brain mechanisms of spatial reasoning in mathematics
Creating an advanced transgenic animal model of autism
Autism is a highly genetic developmental brain disorder which is characterized by social impairments. Autism affects 1 in 68 US children, with an annual cost in the US of $250 billion dollars. Unfortunately, the basic biology of autism remains poorly understood.
A novel PET radioligand to identify microglial inflammation in Alzheimer's disease
Identification of sex hormone interacting proteins
Enabling faster and more responsive voltage imaging through computational biophysics
TrkA-ing the chronic pain
Remote and localized neural activation using sonomagnetic stimulation
A novel sigma-1 receptor PET radioligand as a probe of ketamine’s rapid therapeutic action in disorders of human brain and behavior: Pilot study
The impact of early medial temporal lobe Tau in human cognitive aging
Ultrasonic neural control and neuroimaging in the awake, mobile, and behaving small rodent
We propose to design a lightweight, wearable system for integrated ultrasonic drug uncaging and fUS neuroimaging to noninvasively pharmacologically modulate a brain target and then image the resultant changes in neural activity without significant motion limitations.
Sensory processing in a pre-seizure state
Genetic tools to determine circuit-specific roles of myelination
These tools will enable us to dissect how myelin contributes to specific brain circuits and types of neurons, bringing us closer to a holistic understanding of how cells in the brain collaborate to build a functional nervous system.
Injectable photovoltaics for a wireless, gliosis-free neural stimulation interface
We believe our research has the potential of generating transformative results for both neuroscience research and neurological applications, also offering strategies to manipulate key intracellular pathways to prevent gliosis in therapeutic neural implants.
Investigating the role of a human-specific repeat element in neuropsychiatric disease risk and cerebellar function
Quantifying auditory-vocal affect in human social communication
This proposal brings together faculty with this diverse expertise to develop the first gold standard test of auditory-vocal affect. Once developed, validated, and normed, we will deploy this test in the clinical context of autism to quantify impairments and direct neurobiological investigation.