This proposal is to create a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) in Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Research in the neurosciences is proceeding on many fronts and addressing fundamental questions in both basic and clinical science.
The aim of this COBRE is to establish a research center that can promote interdisciplinary interactions and investigations of neural function, impairments, and repair, by bridging and cross-fertilizing several research units at UNR that have already developed teams of focused expertise in neuroscience, from molecular to behavioral and from understanding normal structure and function to neurological deficits and their treatment. The center will span 3 different colleges and the Medical School, and will support projects led by 5 highly accomplished junior faculty drawn from the departments of Psychology, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, and Physiology and Cell Biology. The research and professional development of these faculty will be mentored by a strong team of successful researchers who will also bring perspectives and expertise drawn from many disciplines. The center will also provide the infrastructure to support the projects as well as new research opportunities throughout the institution by establishing two new core facilities. One core will support training, use, and analysis of structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRl). This core will provide - for the first time - access at UNR to the now standard research tools provided by MRl. The second core will support investigations directed at different patient populations by developing a database that will allow researchers to identify and recruit participants with well defined neurological lesions. Both the center and new core facilities will expand research strengths and translational neuroscience at UNR in entirely new directions, while providing infrastructure that has broad applications in both basic and clinical research and can thus support use and research synergisms across many disciplines and programs on campus and in the state.
Neurological impairments and disease are a major focus of healthcare, and understanding and treating these impairments is central to the mission of many institutes at NIH. The COBRE will support research that will help to characterize both the healthy brain and neural disorders, and will advance knowledge ranging from the neural basis of behavior to neural damage and repair.
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