Afive-year, $8 million National Institutes
of Health grant to four scientists at WVU, and one at Marshall
University, will establish a new research center and develop
projects in sensory neuroscience.
"Sensory neuroscience is the study of how
we perceive the world around us," said Robert M. D'Alessandri,
M.D., vice president for health sciences and dean of medicine
at WVU. "Everything we see, hear, touch, or smell is processed
through the nervous system and the brain. Diseases and injuries
that impair these functions are often difficult to diagnose and
treat. The Sensory Neuroscience Research Center will provide
scientists from many disciplines with a center for study of these
functions, from the molecular level up to the systems level."
George A. Spirou, an associate professor in the WVU School of
Medicine, has been appointed director of the new center and is
the principal investigator for the NIH grant. Other WVU researchers
funded by the grant are Janine D. Mendola, Albert S. Berrebi,
Peter H. Mathers, and Aric Agmon. Elizabeth C. Bryda of the Marshall
University School of Medicine is also part of the group.
"We are already an established neuro-science research group,"
said Spirou. "This NIH center will bring the two medical
schools together for this important research. It also will complement
the work of WVU's Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute."
The $8 million in new funding will support five research projects,
plus the administrative functions of the center. The major focus
of the research will be on the development of the brain, and
what Spirou calls the "plasticity" of the nervous system.
"The brain is a remoldable, renewable organ," he said.
"As we learn, as we recover from injury, and as we experience
the world around us, the brain changes to adapt to each new situation."
Mendola, a radiologist in the WVU Center for Advanced Imaging,
will use the University's new functional magnetic resonance imaging
capabilities to study visual processing in the brain. She hopes
to discover more about the causes and possible treatments for
amblyopia, or lazy eye. Berrebi, Mathers, and Spirou will conduct
projects to investigate how the brain establishes connections
during development, forming the synapses and axons that link
sensory organs to specific structures in the brain.
Bryda is a molecular geneticist. Her project will explore the
genetic causes of hereditary deafness and balance dysfunction,
with a goal of devising gene therapy strategies for reversing
ear defects.
Their projects will also study the molecular signals that help
establish the connections. This research is aimed at developing
new therapies to treat brain and neurological injury, and neuro-degenerative
disease.
"There are only a handful of centers in the world that focus
specifically on sensory neuroscience," said Spirou, "and
we may be the only one with a wide enough interdisciplinary range
to do research from the molecular level right up through the
systems level."
NIH has designated the effort as a Center of Biomedical Research
Excellence in sensory neuroscience. That recognition, Spirou
says, will be important in developing future funding and faculty
recruitment.
"Concentrating all this neuroscience activity will make
it easier to attract the best faculty, post-doctoral researchers,
and graduate students to WVU," he said.