News and Publications

2002 DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

Chair Floyd Bloom, Ph.D., became president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.

Professor George F. Koob, Ph.D., was awarded the Distinguished Research Award by the Research Society on Alcoholism.

Associate Professor Howard Fox, M.D., Ph.D., became chairman of the AIDS Neuropathogenesis and Comorbidity Factors NIH Study Section.

2002 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

Tamas Bartfai, Ph.D., professor and director of the Harold L. Dorris Neurological Research Center, and colleagues from the United Kingdom and Switzerland, described the first effective treatment for human serum amyloidosis, potentially applicable for treating Alzheimer's disease and amyloid disorders, and synthesized the first systemically active galanin agonists, showing that they represent a new class of anticonvulsant agents in the brain.

Professor Michael Buchmeier, Ph.D., demonstrated a central role of chemokines, particularly IP-10 and RANTES, in the pathogenesis of central nervous system demyelination in a viral model, and mapped the induction of specific host response cytokine and chemokine genes on the murine coronavirus genome.

Associate Professor Iain L. Campbell, Ph.D., established a primary link between inflammation in the brain during development, activation of the sonic hedgehog-signaling pathway in granule neurons and the development of medulloblastoma--the most common malignant brain tumor in children.

Associate Professor Juan C. de la Torre, Ph.D., rescued for the first time a recombinant Arenavirus using reverse genetic approaches, and provided the first comprehensive analysis of changes in global gene expression in brains persistently infected with Borna disease virus, a novel neurotropic infectious agent causing neurodevelopmental and behavioral abnormalities.

Associate Professor Cindy Ehlers, Ph.D., identified the leading biological factors underlying the cause of alcoholism in Native American Mission Indians. Alcoholism occurs in more than 60 percent of this population.

Fox extended investigations into the causes of dementia, a devastating sequela of HIV infection, reporting that even quite early after infection, a significant increase of activated immune cells is present in the brain, and that this increase is indeed correlated with neurological dysfunction.

Associate Professor Donna Gruol, Ph.D.,demonstrated that interleukin-6, a cytokine induced in the brain in injury and disease, causes neuroadaptive changes in developing neurons that are mediated by gene expression and result in altered neuronal physiology, potentially associated with fetal infection, perinatal asphyxia, and traumatic brain injury.

Associate Professor Steven J. Henriksen, Ph.D., reported a novel mechanism of brain attention and arousal based on neurophysiological studies of brainstem GABA containing projection neurons, a new neural systems substrate potentially affected in attention deficit disorder and schizophrenia.

Koob conceptualized an innovative process of long-term adaptive physiological regulation, termed allostasis, responsible for underlying psychopathology of drug addiction. He also established that reward deficit is a mechanism for the transition of drug use to drug addiction.

Professor Merrill M. Mitler, Ph.D., organized and supported an international cooperative study to establish norms for the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT), now a global medical resource, and collated and reviewed the literature on pharmacotherapy for narcolepsy.

Professor Michael B.A. Oldstone, M.D., provided the primary observation of the immune synapse in vivo and mapped molecules inside and outside the synapse important in the function of T cells engaging virus-infected cells. This data will be important for evaluating the efficacy of therapeutic interventions to control inflammatory diseases, optimizing vaccination strategies and assessing the efficiency of immune responses against tumors.

Associate Professor John Polich, Ph.D., developed a reliable paradigm using sensory-evoked brain potentials to quantify attention-focusing capabilities of the frontal lobes, useful to detect those at risk for alcoholism and those suffering from Parkinson's.

Professor George Robert Siggins, Ph.D., substantiated his hypothesis that metabotropic glutamate receptor activation regulates the sensitivity to ethanol of GABAergic and glutamatergic central synapses and demonstrated that ethanol increases GABAergic inhibitory neurotransmission by a novel presynaptic mechanism in virtually all neurons of the central amygdala.

Associate Professor Bert Weiss, Ph.D., showed that stress and exposure to drug-associated environmental cues interact to exacerbate relapse risk, and that this effect results from concurrent activation of receptors for the stress-regulatory neuropeptide, CRF, and endogenous opioid receptors.

Professor Lindsay Whitton, M.D., Ph.D., continued studies on the molecular and immune mechanisms involved in viral pathogenesis and antiviral immunity.