The BBRF Young Investigator Grant program provides support for the most promising young scientists conducting neurobiological and psychiatric research. This program facilitates innovative research opportunities and supports basic, translational, and clinical researchers. Melissa Herman, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, aims to better understand underlying cellular actions and brain region-specific effects of the … Continued

Recorded webinar: “Alcohol and the Teenage Brain” from the Society for Neuroscience and BrainFacts.org, featuring Dr. Donita Robinson and Dr. Bonnie Nagel. Teens are wired to seek novel, exciting experiences and take risks. All too often, that leads to experimentation with drugs and alcohol. The teen brain is especially sensitive to the effects of alcohol, … Continued

BCAS congratulates Dr. Markus Heilig for winning the 2019 Bowles Lectureship Award.  The Bowles Award is given annually to honor a distinguished researcher who has made significant contributions to our understanding of the causes, prevention and/or treatment of alcoholism and alcohol abuse. Dr. Heilig presented a lecture entitled “How we got alcohol addiction wrong: One … Continued

Led by Brennon Luster and Liz Cogan, examining how repeated morphine withdrawal alters behavior and inhibitory synapses in male and female mice, published in Addiction Biology. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/adb.12748   Viewpoint led by Karl Schmidt describing new developments in distinguishing dopamine and norepinephrine with various  techniques published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschemneuro.9b00157  

  Led by A. Leslie Morrow, PhD, research shows how new compounds could target specific brain cell receptors to treat a wide variety of conditions, such as alcoholism, Alzheimer’s, depression, and posttraumatic stress. For the first time, scientists discovered how neuroactive steroids naturally found in the brain and bloodstream inhibit the activity of a specific … Continued

The Chairman is allocated first. All remaining permits are assigned first to tenured and tenure-track faculty and then to other permanent staff based on duration of total state service. There is no distinction made between EPA research faculty and SPA staff. The Director will exercise his or her authority to make adjustments to this policy as … Continued

Monday Jan 25th Zoe McElligott, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Alcohol and Amygdalar Circuits” Monday Feb 15th Leon Coleman, M.D., Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Toward … Continued

Dr. Clyde Hodge receives NIH grant supplement to develop research on Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s-related dementias. Dr. Hodge has received a 1-yr grant through the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to supplement his currently funded R37 MERIT award from the NIAAA. The laboratory’s ongoing work … Continued

“The part of the brain that is doing most of the heavy lifting to encode new memory is called the hippocampus,” said Scott Swartzwelder, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “It’s a structure that happens to be very, very sensitive to alcohol.”

Neurotensin and Dynorphin Bi-Directionally Modulates CeA Inhibition of oval BNST Neurons in Male Mice (in press at Neuropharmacology, authors are Catherine P Normandeau, Maria Luisa Torruella Suarez, Philippe Sarret, Zoe McElligott*, Eric C Dumont*, *co-senior author ) Stress-induced alterations of norepinephrine release in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis of mice (in press at ACS Chemical Neuroscience, authors are Karl T Schmidt, Viren H Makhijani, Kristen M Boyt, Dipanwita Pati, Melanie M Pina, Isabel M Bravo, Jason LLocke, Sara R Jones, Joyce Besheer, Zoe … Continued