Immediate Goals: 75 percent full-time support for five years for Dr. Noga to enhance his academic psychiatry career mentored by outstanding teachers and neuroscientists Dr. Michael Kuhar, (Chief of Neuroscience, Yerkes' Regional Primate Center at Emory) and Dr. Raymond Dingledine, (Chairman, Emory Department of Pharmacology). Their active research interests in and extensive knowledge of molecular aspects of receptor function are highly sought after by Dr. Noga in neuropsychiatric disease research. Dr. Noga will mature scientifically through an intensive and structured sequence of advanced neurobiology coursework and mentored laboratory experience designed to develop fully his potential to become an independent investigator of first-rank in the molecular aspects of neuropsychiatric diseases. This developmental plan will comprise 30 percent didactic and 70 percent research components around the theme of neuroreceptor theory and molecular biological methods, particularly for the continuing study of glutamatergic systems in human neuropsychiatric disease. The didactic portion includes formal coursework, neuroscience seminars, and professional scientific meetings enabling Dr. Noga to become fluent and well grounded in basic principles of molecular neuroscience. Research Project: 70 percent of the program comprises Dr. Noga's specific research focus on the complexity of striatal AMPA receptor pathology at the molecular and biochemical levels in schizophrenia. Drs. Noga, Kuhar, and Dingledine propose to extend and expand upon Dr. Noga's preliminary finding of increased AMPA receptor binding in caudate nucleus in schizophrenia using a new, larger sample of striatal tissue (n=31 schizophrenia; 31 normals, 22 bipolars 15 major depression, and 9 suicides) from the NIMH and Stanley Foundation brain banks. The null hypothesis is that AMPA receptor binding and gene expression are not different in schizophrenia compared with controls. Long-Term Goals: Dr. Noga desires to study etiopathologic and clinicopathologic correlations in neuropsychiatric diseases presenting with psychotic symptoms and cognitive impairment such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, and Parkinson's disease in which glutamatergic systems have been increasingly implicated in pathological mechanisms and therapeutics. Dr. Noga's unifying theme in academic psychiatry is to understand further the neurobiological basis for psychotic and cognitive aspects of disorders such as schizophrenia and dementia syndromes, in order to alleviate further their enormous personal, societal, and public health costs. This theme is central to the focus of his developing clinical practice, teaching, and research in geriatric neuropsychiatry at Emory. Dr. Noga will grow from this intensive neuroscience educational and practical experience to become a first-rank clinician scientist able to organize independently the advanced study of molecular structure and function in neuropsychiatric diseases, especially as related to glutamatergic neurotransmission systems.
| Noga, J Thomas; Wang, Hui (2002) Further postmortem autoradiographic studies of AMPA receptor binding in schizophrenia. Synapse 45:250-8 |
