María Luisa, a graduate student in the the McElligott lab at the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, received an NRSA from the NIAAA entitled “Examining Alcohol Induced Plasticity in Amygdala Hind Brain Circuits.” She will work to determine whether a history of alcohol consumption in mice can alter the behavioral and physiological properties of amygdalar circuits targeting the hindbrain.

Hiroyuki Kato, PhD, has been selected as a Pew Scholar in Biological Sciences, which provides funding to young investigators of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of human health.
The Kato Lab will use this award to study the circuit mechanisms underlying the extraction of complex sounds in the auditory cortex. Findings in the simple mouse cortex should provide a first step towards an ultimate understanding of the neuronal circuits underlying vocal communications, and how they fail in diseased brains.

The Dokholyan and Deshmukh labs published a report in PNAS where they examined the neurotoxicity of various SOD1 protein aggregates in a model of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). The large SOD1 aggregates, which are a hallmark of ALS, are generally considered to contribute to motor neuron death in ALS. However, the study found that the large SOD1 aggregates are less toxic than the smaller SOD1 trimers. These results suggest that therapies targeted towards the SOD1 trimers, rather than the larger SOD1 fibrils, may be more effective for the treatment of ALS.

The latest publication from the Song Lab, “An Adeno-Associated Virus-Based Toolkit for Preferential Targeting and Manipulating Quiescent Neural Stem Cells in the Adult Hippocampus”, has made the cover of Stem Cell Reports!