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Florida Faculty and Professional Staff
Courtney Miller
Assistant Professor
Metabolism & Aging
TSRI - 2009
Joint Appointments Department of Neuroscience
Education
B.S., Biopsychology (1999), University of California, Santa Barbara, California
Ph.D., Neurobiology & Behavior and Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory (2005), University of California, Irvine, California
Research Fellow, Neuroscience (2005-2006), Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
Evelyn F. McKnight Research Fellow, Neurobiology (2006-2009), University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama
Awards & Activities
NIDA Young Investigator Award (2005)
Civitan Emerging Scholar Award (2006)
Faculty of 1000 Biology Selection, Exceptional (2007)
Philip Morris Extramural Research Fellowship (2007)
NIH/NINDS National Research Scholar Award (2007-2009)
Kauffman Fellow - Program for Venture Education (2008)
Invited Speaker, NIA Epigenomics Roadmap Meeting (2008)
Invited Speaker, NIDA Annual Meeting (2008)
NIH/NIDA Pathways to Independence Award (2009-2014)
Invited Speaker, NIMH Seminar Series (2009)
Young Investigator Award, International Society for Neurochemistry (2009)
Invited Speaker, Keystone Symposium on the Pathophysiology of Autistic Behavior (2010)
Research Focus
Our laboratory is working to understand the neurobiological underpinnings of memory disorders, with the goal of developing novel therapeutics. Our research focuses on the contribution of epigenetic and synaptic mechanisms to two serious health issues, drug addiction and age-related memory decline. Interestingly, while addiction and mild cognitive impairment represent opposing disorders of memory, both are aberrations of a normal cognitive process. The neurochemical alterations produced by a drug of abuse, such as cocaine, initiate a cascade of events that produce aberrantly strong memories. On the other hand, the poorly understood events of aging result in weakened memory traces. This bidirectionality demonstrates that memories are susceptible to modulation by any number of processes capable of influencing the CNS. Thus, we believe that understanding the epigenetic and synaptic mechanisms responsible for this will help us develop effective treatments aimed at weakening memories, in the case of addiction, or strengthening them, in the case of aging.
Selected References
Miller CA, Marshall JF (2005) Molecular substrates of retrieval and reconsolidation of cocaine-associated contextual memory. Neuron 47:873-84.
Miller CA, Sweatt JD (2006) Amnesia or retrieval deficit? Implications of a molecular approach to the question of reconsolidation. Learning & Memory 13:498-505.
Miller CA, Sweatt JD (2007) Covalent modification of DNA regulates memory formation. Neuron 53:857-69.
Kilgore M*, Miller CA*, Fass DM, Hennig KM, Haggarty SJ, Sweatt JD and Rumbaugh G (2009) Inhibitors of Class I histone deacetylases reverse contextual memory deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's Disease. Neuropharmacology (in press).
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