Funded Research Projects
NeuroDiscovery | EPFL-Stanford Exchange
Lead Researcher(s): Luis de Lecea
The purpose of this collaborative project is to study neuronal mechanisms associated with social stress. In particular we will test whether the energy producing systems, known as mitochondria, in a specific set of brain cells are important to confer resilience to stressful stimuli. This research...
Lead Researcher(s): Xiaoke Chen
To understand how sensory information and physiological state integrate to drive decisions and behaviors. Dr. Xiaoke Chen's lab is focusing now on interoception, which is the sense of the physiological condition of the body. This include our abilities to feel hungry or satiated, to sense heightened...
NeuroDiscovery | Postdoctoral Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Andrew Whittle
Everyone is well aware of their white adipose tissue and its ability to store excess energy as fat. In fact the efficiency with which it does this has led to obesity and related metabolic diseases becoming the largest single health burden in the United States. Yet buried behind our collar-bones and...
NeuroDiscovery | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Kiah Hardcastle
Navigation through an environment to a remembered location is a critical skill we use every day. How does our brain accomplish such a task? Over the last few decades, several lines of evidence have suggested that a brain region called medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) supports navigation by encoding...
NeuroDiscovery | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Kevin Guttenplan
Many neurological diseases feature the death of neurons, but the mechanisms that mediate cell death in these disorders are unknown. Astrogliosis, the response of a cell-type called “astrocytes” to injury, is common to most diseases of the central nervous system (CNS), and recent studies in our lab...
NeuroDiscovery | Seed Grant
We aim to understand how brain mechanisms of spatial reasoning are brought into play during symbolic mathematical cognition and to identify individual differences in these mechanisms that co-vary with mathematical ability and mathematical experience.
NeuroDiscovery | Seed Grant
Lead Researcher(s): Karen J. Parker, PhD, Alexander Eckehart Urban, Megan Albertelli, Joachim Hallmayer
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. Consequently, there are currently no...
NeuroDiscovery | Big Idea
Optimizing choice: From neuroscience to public policy
NeuroDiscovery | Postdoctoral Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Whitney Heavner
This research seeks to understand how our genes encode the instructions for neurons in the neocortex to properly arise during normal brain development. This knowledge will allow scientists to understand how genetic mutations perturb development leading to human disease.
NeuroDiscovery | Postdoctoral Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Rupa Lalchandani
Due to the critical role that dopamine producing neurons play in pathophysiology, it is important to examine the function of its co-released GABA. This research aims to study GABA biosynthesis in midbrain dopamine producing neurons and it’s effect on striatal inhibition.
