This award provides support to The University of Richmond (UR) for a suite of neuroscience and animal behavioral-recording equipment, which includes a fluorescence microscope with motorized stage and image analysis (IA) capabilities; motorized cryostat; histological processing system; tissue-sectioning Vibratome; neuron tracing software; automated behavioral analysis system with touch screen; acoustic startle boxes; and activity monitors. This complementary and high-throughput equipment will allow UR and affiliated students and faculty to make further advances in understanding the development of the brain. Several different combinations of investigators will use the requested equipment: research faculty and postdoctoral fellows at UR in Neuroscience, Psychology and Biology; faculty, graduate and undergraduate students from UR and affiliated universities and colleges (Randolph-Macon College, in Ashland, VA; Virginia Union University, a Historically Black College in Richmond, VA; Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA); and students and faculty from international institutions.
These faculty and students will design behavioral experiments that can be analyzed by the latest objective automated behavioral recording devices, including basic and complex social interactions. The cryostat and Vibratome and automated immunohistological apparatus will allow faster, more efficient, and more reliable processing of brain tissue. Automated IA and neuronal identification and 3-dimensional drawing features, as well as new double- and triple-labeling immunofluorescent techniques will provide precise neuronal localization of important neurochemicals. In sum, this equipment will allow the investigators to conduct many detailed, comprehensive, and complementary behavioral, and multiple antigen-labeling studies of maternal and paternal brains - studies that heretofore were difficult to perform well, if at all.
The addition of this apparatus will significantly increase the numbers of students -- broadly defined, on and off-campus, international, etc. -- that can be exposed to, and gain experience in, basic research and instruction in the neurosciences. In the process, these investigators can answer valuable questions, train a significant number of future scientists, and share the information with the scientific and lay communities alike, which include local and national media, and metro-Richmond K-12 schools, museums, and hospitals.
