Three neuroscientists earn prestigious NIH grant for brain research

Three UCLA neuroscientists — Michele Basso, Dr. Peyman Golshani and Daniel Aharoni — received a nearly $3.7 million, three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for a study that will develop imaging technology that allows the recording of tens of thousands of neurons to better understand how the brain goes aw ry in disease.The grant, part of the National Institutes of Health ’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, or BRAIN, Initiative, will support the team ’s work to design, manufacture and test a miniature microscope for measuring brain activity in non-rodent animals. The UCLA neuroscientists are with the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and the Brain Research Institute of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UC LA.The goal of the initiative, first announced in 2013 by President Barack Obama, is to gather more information and tools to better understand how the brain functions, both in health and in disease. By unraveling some of the mysteries of the brain, the project aims to develop better ways to diagnose and treat neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer ’s disease, autism, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease and depression.The UCLA team is led by Basso, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and a leader in cognitive and systems neuroscience. Golshani, an associate professor of neurology, and Aharoni, an assistant professor of neurology, both are leaders in ...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news