Active Research Grants

The study explores the potential for using self-knowledge training to improve learning and problem-solving performance. It deploys the PIs expertise in the biological and experiential factors that drive individual differences in cognition and social learning theory.

This project continues research on survival of an endangered species, including artificial incubation and hand rearing, native foraging and pre-release antipredator training, sampling to monitor for disease in hand-reared birds, and investigation of factors leading to nesting failure of wild and captive-reared birds using nest monitoring cameras.

This project investigates how different framings of racism influence Asian Americans’ intraminority solidarity with Black Americans. It explores whether framing racism against Black Americans as the result of anti-Blackness increases Asian Americans’ sense of solidarity with Black Americans, compared to framing racism as the result of White supremacy.

This project examines effects of both direct and vicarious racial discrimination on alcohol and cannabis use and co-use.

K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award launches a career as an independent scientist. This K99 phase will provide intensive training in the combined study of alcohol use with experimental, ecological momentary assessment, and computational approaches, and will position Dr. Dora to make substantial contributions to the field of alcohol research

This project seeks to characterize positive and negative online experiences as sources of risk and resilience for loneliness and psychopathology, studying in early and mid adolescents, key developmental points of transformation of peer interactions.

This project seeks to improve research practices to obtain and report racial identity information in ways that recognizeand respect individuals’ identity and avoids reinforcing essentialized views of race.

This project tests the hypothesis that spatial- and feature-based attention is more narrowly focused and that rapidoscillations of attention occur at a slower rate in people with autism spectrum disorder ASD.

This project combines recent advances in behavioral analysis, in vivo brain-wide neural imaging, and neurogenetics to investigate the coordination of locomotion and acoustic signal production (courtship song) in a genetically tractable model: Drosophila melanogaster.

This study measures brain organization/connectivity. It is an early Phase II randomized controlled trial to obtainpreliminary data on mechanisms and efficacy of a hearing aid-based intervention to prevent cognitive decline in those atrisk for Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias.

This project builds upon our existing infrastructure for large-scale studies of adult serious mental illnesses serious mental illness SMI in the region to establish a new cohort of 3,000 children and early adolescents at elevated or low risk for SMI. Study findings will clarify the associations between genomic risk profile and premorbid clinical markers of psychopathology; clarify the relative power of genetic versus clinical, neurobehavioral, and environmental factors for predicting clinical outcomes; and establish a unique resource for the scientific community for rich longitudinal investigation for years to come, and quantify the relative power of genetic versus clinical and neurobehavioral characteristics for predicting clinical outcomes.

The Auditory Neuroscience Training Program, established in 2002, helps train basic neuroscience researchers in clinical disciplines. Trainees participate in research programs in neuroanatomy, development, genetics, cell and molecular biology, neuropharmacology, and electrophysiology of the peripheral and central auditory system as well as psychoacoustics, language perception and processing, and communication behavior. They have the opportunity to combine research through collaborative efforts.

This project will provide new insights into the development of spatial skills and their relation to STEM achievement in order to best set students up for success. Alongside this research is a plan to provide intensive research experience for undergraduate students and a plan to create a bidirectional relation between community participation in research and scientific outreach activities.

This ALACRITY (Advanced Laboratories for Accelerating the Reach and Impact of Treatments for Youth and Adults with Mental Illness) Center goal is to improve evidence-based practices. It develops an open-source, database of methods and guidelines for strategies that can be utilized by practitioners and researchers.

Within a decade, many blind individuals are likely to be offered a wide range of options for sight restoration - including electronic prostheses, gene therapy and optogenetics. However the vision provided by almost all of these technologies will differ substantially from normal sight. The question of this proposal is – What role can cortical plasticity play in helping patients make use of the artificial visual input provided by sight recovery technology?

The proposed research study will use passive mobile sensing data in a large ambulatory assessment sample of regular drinkers, to develop models linking passive mobile sensing data with predictors of drinking episodes (such as stress, social context, and impulsiveness) and the drinking episodes themselves.

Exposure to destabilizing, stressful life events is common, ranging from 50-89.5% in the U.S. population. The impact of such events is both psychological, such as anxiety and depression symptoms, and physiological, with activation of sympathetic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-cortical system. PTSD and depression both have strong etiologic links to stressful life events, share common distress-related symptoms, often co-occur (upwards of 60%), and are associated with impairment and reduction in disease-adjusted years of life. Evidence based psychotherapies for PTSD and depression are helpful for many. However, these interventions also have significant dropout and a large minority of individuals who are left with debilitating symptoms and are vulnerability to relapse upon future stressors. Current treatments typically focus on specific disorders rather than on common mechanisms maintain psychopathology and do not target adaptive mechanisms. Decades of experimental and prospective studies have identified central maladaptive and adaptive processes associated with persistent psychopathology or recovery following stressful, destabilizing events. These processes include: 1) unproductive/constructive event processing (e.g., re-experiencing, rumination, overgeneralization); 2) avoidance/approach (e.g., blunting, disengagement) and 3) anhedonia/reward (e.g., loss of pleasure). These processes prolong negative mood, interfere with adaptive coping and processing of emotional material, and increase sensitivity to future stressful life events. We have developed an intervention, Positive Processes and Transition to Health (PATH) that directly targets maladaptive processes (unproductive processing, avoidance, and anhedonia), while also teaching parallel adaptive skills (constructive processing, approach, and reward seeking). Six, 90-min sessions target individuals who have experienced a destabilizing life stressor and have persistent stress-related symptoms. PATH utilizes systematic event processing (revisiting, discussing), focusing repeatedly on the identified destabilizing life event, positive life events, and future events to teach adaptive processing skills. In a small open trial, we will examine whether PATH engages proposed targets. Next, we will conduct a randomized trial of PATH compared to waitlist control and assess patients over a three-month period. We are interested in improving both stressor-related psychopathology and potentially influencing stress-related markers of immune functioning and neural plasticity (brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF, a significant factor driving brain changes in response to and recovery from stress). Stress related psychopathology is common, impairing and very costly. Evidence based treatments leave substantial room for improvement. Our mechanism based intervention has the potential to improve outcomes and reduce burden with substantial public health impact.

This project studies the neural circuits in the brain that integrate and process complex sensory information to guide natural behaviors. This research will have applicability to psychiatric disorders that involve deficits in sensory integration, such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders. They will also provide insight into the cognitive deficits seen in pathological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

Despite strong consensus that early, specialized intervention for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can have a dramatic impact on outcomes, the public health system’s capacity to provide such services is severely challenged by the rapid rise in ASD prevalence. The goal of this research is to increase timely and equitable access to ASD-specialized early intervention during the critical first three years of life by capitalizing on the existing infrastructure of the Part C Early Intervention (EI) system, which is publicly funded and available in all U.S. States. This project will train EI providers to use an evidence-based, inexpensive, parent-mediated intervention that can improve child and family outcomes as well as mitigate the substantial economic costs associated with ASD.

The Summer Institute in Neuroimaging and Data Science provides training in modern data science tools and methods, such as programming, data management, machine learning and data visualization. Through lectures, hands-on training sessions and team projects, it will empower scientists from a variety of backgrounds in the use of these tools in research on the human brain and on neurological and psychiatric brain disorders.

The BRAINS (Broadening the Representation of Academic Investigators in NeuroScience) Program, established in 2011, explicitly addresses the inclusion, retention, and advancement of early career (post Ph.D. to pre-tenure) neuroscientists from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups (URMGs: individuals from marginalized racial and ethnic identities and persons with disabilities). BRAINS has pioneered a unique cohort-based professional development approach that positively impacts participants’ career trajectories, especially in academic neuroscience, by building a community of neuroscience peers, enabling mentoring networks, activating participants’ cultural capital, and increasing participants’ career self-efficacy. The success of BRAINS is evident by our findings that 90% of the 144 participants continue to remain in neuroscience careers. Moreover, 50% are currently in tenure track positions, compared to 24% at time of joining BRAINS. With this renewal project, Aim 1 builds on the successes of BRAINS by expanding our program through an increase in the number of the BRAINS community participants, as well as deepening the engagement of all participants with core BRAINS skills and concepts. When compared to other national professional development programs, the BRAINS program stands out in terms of the extent to which BRAINS participants continue to engage deeply with the community long after their first year in the program. In its first decade, evaluation data show that BRAINS programming is a consistent transformational and foundational resource for its participants. Thus, the BRAINS program is uniquely positioned to explore and identify the essential factors that increase retention of neuroscientists from URMGs in academic and nonacademic science careers. Therefore, in Aim 2, we will introduce a new 10-year evaluation instrument to help us to better understand why the program is impactful and what sticks with participants as they progress through their careers. In summary, these Aims will allow BRAINS to expand in terms of participant numbers and in terms of continuing to empower over 200 neuroscientists from URMGs to thrive and advance in their careers. Further, this work will shed new light on the important factors that can improve the long term retention of neuroscientists from URMGs in science careers, which in turn can inform the development of future programs and institutional policies aimed at increasing the retention of URM scientists in biomedical careers.