April 5, 2018
Richard van Dijn from the Purdue College of Pharmacy, along with Meridith T. Robins, Terrance Chiang, Kendall L. Mores, and Doungkamol Alongkronrusmee have explored the hypothesis that dorsal striatal Gi/o-protein activation is sufficient to reduce voluntary alcohol intake. Using a voluntary, limited-access, two-bottle choice, drink-in-the-dark model of alcohol (10%) consumption, they validated the importance of Gi/o signaling in this region by locally expressing neuron-specific, adeno-associated-virus encoded Gi/o-coupled muscarinic M4 designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADD) in the dorsal striatum and observed a decrease in alcohol intake upon DREADD activation. Overall, these results suggest that activation Gi/o-coupled GPCRs expressed in the dorsal striatum, such as the DOR, by G-protein biased agonists may be a potential strategy to decrease voluntary alcohol consumption and ?-arrestin recruitment is to be avoided.
Critical Role for Gi/o-Protein Activity in the Dorsal Striatum in the Reduction of Voluntary Alcohol Intake in C57Bl/6 Mice
March 28, 2018
The IUPUI School of Science is hosting a "Computational & Systems Neuroscience: from theory to clinical applications" Symposium on April 27, 2018. The symposium will bring together researchers in computational and systems neuroscience from multiple universities and campuses in Indiana. It features internationally renowned neuroscientists presenting leading-edge interdisciplinary research that bridges theoretical, experimental and clinical directions. A limited number of poster presentations will be accepted.
March 28, 2018
Dr. Hyowon Lee (PIIN), Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, recently published his latest study “Electrochemical Evaluations of Fractal Microelectrodes for Energy Efficient Neurostimulation” in the journal Scientific Reports. The findings suggest that electrode design can significantly affect both Faradaic and non-Faradaic electrochemical processes, which may be optimized to enable a more energy efficient design for neurostimulation.
March 28, 2018
Dr. Richard M. van Rijn (PIIN), Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology recently published their latest study “Behavioral Characterization of ?-Arrestin 1 Knockout Mice in Anxiety-Like and Alcohol Behaviors” in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. In this study Dr. Van Rijn laboratory characterized a genetic knockout mice strain lacking the beta-arrestin1 gene in behavioral models associated with anxiety and reward, finding that female knockout mice have a tendency to drink higher amounts of alcohol, suggestive of a protective role for this protein in alcohol use.
March 28, 2018
Dr. Zhongming Liu (PIIN), Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering, recently published two of their latest studies, “Deep residual network predicts cortical representation and organization of visual features for rapid categorization” in the journal Scientific Reports and “Electrophysiological source imaging: a non-invasive window to brain dynamics” in the journal Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering. These two publications aim to identify an underlying computational basis of vision and its application to artificial intelligence.
March 28, 2018
Dr. Richard M. van Rijn (PIIN), Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (MCMP) recently received a 2-year R03 for $149,324 from National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Van Rijn along with his collaborator Dr. Markus Lill from MCMP. The primary goals of the grant are to synthesize novel agonists of the delta opioid receptor that has strong preference to signal via G-proteins using computer-assisted drug design, characterize the novel compounds in cellular models to ensure potency and selectivity, and then test the top three drugs for their analgesic ability in reducing inflammatory pain.
March 28, 2018
Dr. Susan Sangha (PIIN), Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences was recently awarded with $1.2M for 5-year from the National Institute of Mental Health entitled “Neural circuitry of safety, fear and reward cue discrimination”. The proposed studies will test how inputs from the prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area to the basolateral amygdala are mediating safety-fear-reward discrimination in male and female rats. Recent data from the Sangha laboratory shows that females in this task are more fear responsive during safety cues and more reward responsive when reward is available compared to males. By determining how sex differences in this neuronal circuit are generating sex differences in safety-fear-reward behavioral discrimination, behavioral and pharmacological treatments in both males and females diagnosed with emotion dysregulation disorders can be improved.
March 28, 2018
The Purdue affiliated startup company (MR-Link LLC), co-founded by Dr. Zhongming Liu (PIIN) and his graduate students (Ranajay Mandal and Nishant Babaria) recently received an NIH STTR (Phase I) grant $230K for one year. The grant will support MR-Link LLC to commercialize miniaturized devices to enable MRI-integrated neural imaging, recording, and stimulation.
March 28, 2018
Dr. Amy L. Brewster (PIIN), Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering was recently awarded an R56 grant for $250K from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke entitled “A role for the complement system in seizure induced neuronal and dendritic injury”.
March 27, 2018
The 2018 Greater Indiana Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Chapter Annual Meeting was hosted for the first time at Purdue University in West Lafayette on Friday, March 23, 2018. The event featured national keynote speaker Dr. Patricia Janak, Johns Hopkins University and regional keynote speakers Dr. Donna Fekete and Dr. Richard Van Rijn, Purdue University, Dr. Jason Meyer from IUPUI and Dr. John Beggs from Indiana University.
