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).
Tracking Parkinson’s Disease with transformer models of everyday looking behaviors
It is more common nowadays for people to have their own wearable devices to measure physiological signals like heart rate and respiration to keep track of physical diseases. However, monitoring decline in cognitive functions or development of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s (PD), is still complex and tricky.
Microglia-Mediated Astrocyte Activation in Chronic Pain
While acute pain is an important biological signal in response to injured tissue, chronic pain occurs when the pain signaling outlasts the initial injury and has deleterious effects on health and quality of life. Chronic pain represents an enormous public health burden with few therapeutic options.
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.
High-Fidelity Artificial Retina for Vision Restoration
This team will use their Neuroscience:Translate award to develop a large-scale bi-directional neural interface that will restore high-fidelity vision to people blinded by retinal degeneration.
Programmable RNA editing in Parkinson’s disease therapy
This team will use their Neuroscience:Translate award to employ a novel therapeutic technique to correct pathogenic mutations causing Parkinson’s disease.
At-home Stroke Rehabilitation System based on Augmented Reality and Brain Computer Interface Paradigm
This team aims to revolutionize future stroke treatment both in clinics and at home by combining a brain-computer interface and augmented reality (AR) into a single rehabilitation platform.
Silent Speech Decoding Using Flexible Electronics and Artificial Intelligence
This team aims to advance augmentative and alternative communication technology for people with communication disorders and enable new forms of human-computer interaction by combining novel materials science with modern machine learning.
The Synaptic Organization of Dendrites
Tracking Parkinson’s Disease with Transformer Models of Everyday Looking Behaviors
New Thrombectomy Device for Endovascular Neurosurgery
This team will use their Neuroscience:Translate award to develop an entirely new class of ischemic stroke treatment device that will lead to improved clot extraction to improve the success of endovascular thrombectomy.
Development of an Ultrasound Neuromodulation Therapy to Treat Rheumatoid Arthritis
This team will use their Neuroscience:Translate award to develop the first wearable ultrasound (US) device for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
Structural and mechanistic analysis of the protein-protein interface between ABCA1 and ApoE as a potential therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s Disease
We propose a new line of research whose goal is to examine the druggability of a protein-protein interface involving ApoE, an apolipoprotein whose gene variants represent the strongest genetic risk factor for AD.
Dissecting mechanisms of gut-brain communication in Parkinson’s Disease
People with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) have different types of bacteria in their guts compared to people without neurological diseases. We will study which gut bacteria for people with PD to gain a better understanding of how gut bacteria contribute to inflammation in the body and in the brain or people with this condition.
Novel ketone-derived anticonvulsant agents for the treatment of childhood refractory epilepsy
We propose to apply mass spectrometry techniques to measure BHB-Phe and other KD metabolites in children undergoing KD for refractory epilepsy at Stanford. Further, in a mouse model of refractory genetic epilepsy, we will compare targeted BHB-Phe treatment to full KD treatment using transcriptomics, EEG assessment of seizures and cognitive testing.
Life-long, minimally invasive, and multiplex transcriptional profiling of the cerebellum
Why do all our brains mature and age in different ways, leading to different cognitive and behavioral outcomes? We envision a novel method that “copies” the information from the RNAs made by the neurons to sensor RNAs we artificially introduce into live animals.
Use of gut-brain electrophysiology to study interoception in eating disorders
In this study, we aim to (i) perform a feasibility study to determine the acceptance and feasibility of performing such recordings in the AN and ARFID eating disorders population and (ii) test the hypothesis that the electrophysiologic monitoring of the brain and stomach is associated with a clinically validated behavioral measure of interoception involving water distention of the stomach.
In vivo selection for gene mutations that counteract photoreceptor degeneration
Stanford Brain Rejuvenation Project (Phase 2)
The Stanford Brain Rejuvenation Project is an initiative by leading aging researchers, neuroscientists, chemists, and engineers to understand the basis of brain aging and rejuvenation and how they relate to neurodegeneration.
Stroke Collaborative Action Network
Breaches barriers in our understanding of stroke to develop therapies and improve stroke recovery.
Developing a dopamine and neural systems model of anhedonia
More than 60 million people in the United States currently suffer from a serious mental illness, and the associated financial, productivity and human suffering costs are only projected to rise in the near future.
Cognitive remediation of distraction to reduce striatal dysregulation and improve clinical outcomes for individuals with psychosis
The ability to ignore distracters is impaired for individuals with psychosis. This impairment negatively impacts treatment effectiveness and the ability of individuals with psychosis to function fully.
Simultaneous 15O-PET and MRI of cerebral blood flow and cerebrovascular reserve
Continuous blood flow to the brain is needed for neural tissues to survive. Noninvasive imaging of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in humans is challenging, but is critically useful to understand normal brain physiology and to help patients with cerebrovascular disorders such as stroke.
Determining the microstructural basis of diffusion MRI
The aim of this project is to improve the accuracy and reliability of dMRI fiber tracking through comparison with a gold standard that unambiguously relates the measured water diffusion patterns to the underlying tissue structure.