printable versionNeuroscientists get $10 million to establish Conte research center
Robert Malenka
The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded neuroscientists at the School of Medicine a $10 million, five-year grant to establish and operate a Silvio O. Conte Center for Neuroscience Research.
The Stanford Conte Center will be devoted to the study of neuroplasticity: how the brain changes during development or when it is exposed to changing conditions. “The synapses and circuits that the brain uses to process information are modified throughout life by experience,” said Robert Malenka, MD, PhD, the Nancy Friend Pritzker Professor in psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford. “This plasticity is critical for the normal function of the brain, and when plasticity mechanisms go awry, devastating mental illness can result.”
Research on neuroplasticity may have implications for understanding schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, pain syndromes and many other conditions that induce brain adaptations. The research will also be applicable to understanding positive neural changes, such as normal brain development, how the brain best incorporates new learning and how it successfully adapts to challenging situations.
The center’s director will be Malenka, who will be joined by Stanford professors Thomas Südhof, MD, the Avram Goldstein Professor of medicine, and Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, associate professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. The fourth member of the center will be Lu Chen, PhD, associate professor of neurobiology at UC–Berkeley.
The four scientists plan to use advanced techniques to find the key brain chemicals and pathways that drive plasticity in the brain. They will use molecular, electrophysiological and imaging technologies to look at changes in brain function at all levels, from trans-brain circuitry down to the changes in the synapse—the microscopic gap where one nerve cell communicates with another.
Silvio O. Conte Centers, funded by the NIMH, support innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to research addressing important issues in mental health. The NIMH encourages scientists to use the funds to examine one unifying, well-defined scientific question from many angles and at many levels. Previous Conte Center awardees have included a number of Nobel Laureates.