Feinberg
Northwestern Medicine | Northwestern University | Faculty Profiles

News Center

  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
    • Podcast
  • Press Release
  • Media Coverage
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Menu
  • Categories
    • Campus News
    • Disease Discoveries
    • Clinical Breakthroughs
    • Education News
    • Scientific Advances
    • Podcast
  • Press Release
  • Media Coverage
  • Editor’s Picks
    • COVID-19
    • Cardiology
    • Cancer
    • Neurology and Neuroscience
    • Aging and Longevity
    • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
  • News Archives
  • About Us
    • Media Contact
    • Share Your News
    • News Feeds
    • Social Media
    • Contact Us
Home » $6.3 Million Grant to Explore Brain Stimulation
Campus News

$6.3 Million Grant to Explore Brain Stimulation

By Will DossOct 9, 2019
Share
Facebook Twitter Email
Joel Voss, ’07 PhD, associate professor in the Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology, of Medical Social Sciences and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, is a co-principal investigator of a $6.3 million grant from the NIH.

A pair of Northwestern Medicine investigators have received a $6.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), part of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

Joel Voss, ’07 PhD, associate professor of Medical Social Sciences, and John Disterhoft, PhD, the Ernest J. and Hattie H. Magerstadt Memorial Research Professor of Physiology, are co-principal investigators of the project and will explore the cellular mechanisms of brain stimulation. Alik Widge, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, is also a co-principal investigator.

The NIH’s BRAIN Initiative is a multi-disciplinary project that aims to understand how the brain works. Launched in 2013, the first phase of the project focused on developing new tools to explore how patterns of neural activity control thoughts and movements. The BRAIN Initiative now is moving into its second phase: applying those tools.

The new grant builds on an emerging but still experimental therapy: electrical brain stimulation to enhance memory. In the past several years, multiple studies have shown that lightly stimulating certain areas of the brain using transcranial electrical signals can enhance long-term memory, but the source of this phenomenon is still murky, according to Voss.

John Disterhoft, PhD, the Ernest J. and Hattie H. Magerstadt Memorial Research Professor of Physiology, is a co-principal investigator of a $6.3 million grant from the NIH.

“We have shown that it is possible to improve people’s memory abilities using brain stimulation, but we need a detailed understanding of the biological mechanisms if we are going to turn this preliminary method into something useful for treatment purposes in people with memory disorders like Alzheimer’s disease or brain injury,” said Voss, who is also an associate professor in the Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “These experiments will determine the optimal ways to deliver stimulation to improve the function of a region of the brain called the hippocampus, which is the main memory center.”

By improving brain stimulation to optimize treatment, this project could directly generate new treatments to alleviate memory-loss symptoms for a variety of neurological disorders, according to Disterhoft.

“By conducting human and animal experiments in parallel, we should be able to speed up the timeline for developing more efficient stimulation procedures to treat various neurological disorders,” said Disterhoft, who is also a professor at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Since 2013, the BRAIN Initiative has funded over 500 investigators’ projects totaling almost $1 billion, making it one of the largest coordinated scientific projects in history, according to the NIH.

 

Awards Neurology and Neuroscience Physiology Psychiatry
Share. Facebook Twitter Email

Related Posts

Distinguished Implementation Scientist to Lead Medical Social Sciences

Jun 14, 2022

Exploring Ketamine’s Antidepressant Mechanisms

Jun 13, 2022

Northwestern Faculty Elected to Society for Clinical Trials Board

Jun 8, 2022

Comments are closed.

Latest News

Physician Assistant Students Embrace ‘Shades of Purple’

Jul 1, 2022

Dissolving Implantable Device Relieves Pain Without Drugs

Jun 30, 2022

Fathers’ Presence During Childhood Predicts Adult Testosterone Levels

Jun 29, 2022

Epigenetic Biomarkers Predict CVD Risk

Jun 28, 2022

Student Spearheads Ukraine Aid Efforts

Jun 27, 2022
  • News Center Home
  • Categories
  • Press Release
  • Media Coverage
  • Editor’s Picks
  • News Archives
  • About Us
Flickr Photos
20220617_NM_0434
20220617_NM_0858
20220617_NM_0643
20220617_NM_0835
20220617_NM_0544
20220617_NM_0450
20220617_NM_0790
20220617_NM_0811
20220617_NM_0851
20220617_NM_0696
20220617_NM_0779
20220617_NM_0838

Northwestern University logo

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

RSS Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Flickr YouTube Instagram
Copyright © 2022 Northwestern University
  • Contact Northwestern University
  • Disclaimer
  • Campus Emergency Information
  • Policy Statements

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.