The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience is proud to announce the recipients of its inaugural 2022 Innovation and Catalyst Grants.
By studying the independent evolution of the cephalopod nervous system, researchers like Matt McCoy seek to look past the differences to see common features that could teach us fundamental truths about the evolution of intelligence itself.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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).
This team will study the brains of individuals who lived past ninety with their cognitive function intact, using advanced tissue imaging and computer science to understand mechanisms of resilience that could slow neurodegeneration and preserve brain health.
This team aims to discover whether the brain’s endocannabinoid system is dysregulated during aging, triggering inflammation via molecules called prostaglandins. If so, a drug that decouples these systems might restore a youthful brain state and rescue cognitive function.
This team aims to define a network of genes that contribute to stress resistance in neurons and identify how it could be activated to enhance brain resilience and protect against neurodegenerative disease.