Neuroscience

Prashant Donthamsetti has received a prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. His project will use a new platform called Tag-Guided Drug to uncover how specific dopamine signaling proteins contribute to addiction. This work paves the way for more precise and effective addiction therapies. Read More

Vanderbilt scientists shed light on how the enteric nervous system—sometimes called the "brain" of the gut—forms and functions, offering insights that may advance treatments for gut motility disorders like irritable bowel syndrome and chronic constipation. Read More

Meet Rosalind “Roz” Johnson, a graduate education program manager who is in charge of the day-to-day activities of the Human Genetics and Neuroscience graduate programs. Read More

What makes these results exceptional isn’t just the compounds themselves, it’s what they represent: the value of translational research grounded in real-world therapeutic goals. The partners chose to release these best-in-class tool compounds to the scientific community to accelerate further discovery. Read More

Major depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the U.S. Approximately 7% (17.3 million) of American adults had at least one major depressive episode in 2017. Roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population is afflicted with major depressive disorder at any… Read More

What makes these results exceptional isn’t just the compounds themselves, it’s what they represent: the value of translational research grounded in real-world therapeutic goals. The partners chose to release these best-in-class tool compounds to the scientific community to accelerate further discovery. Read More

In this episode of Quantum Potential, Craig Lindsley, William K. Warren, Jr. Professor of Medicine, University Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry, Chemistry and Pharmacology and executive director of the Warren Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery, joins Provost C. Cybele Raver to discuss transformative research exploring how subtle tweaks to brain chemistry could change the way we treat neurodegenerative diseases and chronic pain. Lindsley shares how academic-industry collaborations drive innovation in drug discovery and highlights how Vanderbilt’s scientific workflow is enabling the broader research community to build on its breakthroughs. Read More

For the nearly 30 percent of major depressive disorder patients who are resistant to treatment, ketamine provides some amount of normalcy, but it requires frequent treatment and can have side effects. Vanderbilt researchers now show in proof-of-concept experiments that it may be possible to extend ketamine’s antidepressant effect from about a week to up to two months. Read More

The Vanderbilt Brain Institute’s annual Brain Blast event, held March 26 at the downtown Nashville Public Library, celebrated 25 years of discovery with a day of hands-on neuroscience activities for K–8 students and families. Read More

Anne Taylor, PhD'23, sat down with us to discuss her experience studying basic science at Vanderbilt and how it played a role in her career. Taylor is now a fellow at the Center for Opioid Research, Education & Outreach at the Auburn University Harrison College of Pharmacy. Read More