2018 Seed Grant Projects

The 2018 seed grants address such questions as how to engineer an in vitro platform to study the gut-brain axis, whether sound texture outweighs sequence for zebra finches, whether Brillouin microscopy can be adapted synaptic transmission, how to optimize the temporal resolution of calcium brain imaging, what are the psychobiological pathways supporting paranoia in psychosis, how the acquisition of relational words underlies childhood achievement in math, and how epigenetics influence decision-making for methamphetamine relapse. These seven highly interdisciplinary projects were chosen among 14 proposals from 41 PIs representing five colleges and 15 departments.

A Multimodal Sensor Discovery Platform to Study the Molecular Events Underlying the Gut-Microbiome-Brain Axis

  • Reza Ghodssi, William Bentley, Jens Herberholz

This project engineers an interdisciplinary discovery platform to study gut microbiome-triggered cellular and molecular signaling up close at the native time scales needed to fully understand the underlying mechanisms.

Central Nervous System Processing of Learned Vocal Communication Signals

  • William Idsardi, Jonathan Fritz, and Robert Dooling

This project investigates how well adult zebra finches can discriminate changes in syllable order relative to changes in syllable structure in their natural song motifs.

Precision Optogenetics: msec time resolution optical imaging and control of neuronal circuits

  • Behtash Babadi, Wolfgang Losert

This project combines a novel analysis approach of calcium imaging data with the fastest available spatial light modulation approaches to achieve msec resolution of single action potentials.

Understanding the role of negative affect in psychosis using multimodal imaging and wearable sensors

  • Jack Blanchard, Eun Kyoung Choe, Alexander Shackman

This project combines cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques, wearable GPS sensors, and smartphone-based experience sampling to determine the relative contributions of anxiety-related brain circuits, sleep, and real-world behavior to pervasive negative affect in patients with psychosis.

Role of epigenetic mechanisms in striatum in neuronal encoding of decision-making during incubation of methamphetamine craving

  • Anna Li, Matt Roesch

This project examines whether overexpression of a specific enzyme (HDAC5) impacts reward-guided decision-making and associated neural correlates in post-withdrawal methamphetamine seeking.

Cognitive and Neural Precursors to Semantic Word Learning and Math Development

  • Richard Prather, D.J. Bolger, Marine Carpuat, Joe Dien

This project characterizes the neural and cognitive processes underlying the development of semantic word learning and relational arithmetic reasoning in order to understand mathematics achievement in early childhood.

Adapting Brillouin microscopy to the study of synaptic transmission

  • Giuliano Scarcelli, Joshua Singer

This project probes the mechanical properties of functioning retinal ribbon synapses using Brillouin microscopy.


Top