Scripps Research awarded $3.3 million grant to study brain circuitry
November 02, 2018
Lisa Stowers, PhD, a professor at Scripps Research, has received a $3.3 million grant over five years from the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative. The funding will support her lab’s work to describe a complete neural circuit in a mammalian brain—a first for science.
Stowers says the goal of the project is to compile a “general parts list” of the brain cells that process emotion in a mouse model. “Then we can study how information is flowing through all these pieces in real time,” she says.
The team will focus on a crucial brain circuit that mice and humans share: the circuit that lets us choose when to urinate. In male mice, this circuit directly controls when and where they mark their territory to attract females. “We’re sort of plugging into something the mouse is really good at,” Stowers says. “And this gives us a model for studying more complicated behaviors.”
Of course, humans use this circuit many times a day to plan bathroom visits. In addition to helping scientists understand the brain, studying this circuit could reveal new targets for incontinence therapies.
Stowers credits the BRAIN Initiative’s support so far with giving Scripps Research scientists new methods for studying neuroscience. “The initiative has been incredibly successful,” she says. With new high-tech tools in hand, she looks forward to solving the fundamental mysteries of brain circuitry.
The number of the grant is 1RO1NS108439.
Read the NIH announcement: NIH greatly expands investment in BRAIN Initiative
For more information, contact press@scripps.edu