{"460491":{"#nid":"460491","#data":{"type":"news","title":"NIH BRAIN Initiative Taps Two Labs from Georgia Tech","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETwo researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are riding a second wave of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGarrett Stanley and Christine Payne, both faculty members of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, are among the 131 investigators working at 125 institutions in the U.S. and eight other countries receiving 67 new awards, totaling more than $38 million. \u0026nbsp;The new round of funding brings the NIH investment for BRAIN Initiative research to $85 million in fiscal year 2015.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStanley, Payne, and their collaborators are part of a new round of projects for visualizing the brain in action. It\u2019s all part of the initiative launched by President Obama in 2014 as a wide-spread effort to equip researchers with fundamental insights for treating a range of brain disorders, like Alzheimer\u2019s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy and traumatic brain injury.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStanley and Dieter Jaeger, professor in Emory University\u2019s Department of Biology, are principal investigators of a project titled, \u201cMultiscale Analysis of Sensory-Motor Cortical Gating in Behaving Mice.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETheir overall goal is better understand and capture the flow of information as we sense and perceive the outside world, \u201cso that we can take action,\u201d says Stanley, professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), a joint department of Emory and Georgia Tech. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Stanley lab provides expertise on tactile sensing and information processing, while the Jaeger lab provides expertise on motor\/muscle coordination and control.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe are developing approaches to using genetically expressed voltage sensors to optically image brain activity during a sensory-motor task,\u201d Stanley says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe new technology would let the researchers monitor brain activity at high spatial and temporal resolution over long periods of time.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt allows us to address questions related to the circuits involved in coordinating the relationship between sensing and action for the first time,\u201d Stanley says.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe project grew out of another collaboration between Jaeger and Stanley. They are co-principal investigators of an NIH-sponsored training grant in computational neuroscience, which targets a new generation of scientists bound together through questions about how the brain computes.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThrough this interaction, Dieter and I got to know each other better, started to talk more science, and eventually cooked up this project,\u201d Stanley says.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u201cThe research is relevant to public health because it provides an impactful and innovative study of the circuitry underlying the output from the basal ganglia to the motor cortex and the integration of basal ganglia output with sensory information.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDebilitating and difficult to treat neurological disorders like Parkinson\u2019s disease, Huntington\u2019s disease and dystonia are caused by dysfunction of this circuitry.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe proposed research is expected to provide basic insights into motor circuit function and may reveal new possibilities for treatment of these diseases as well as a better understanding of deep brain stimulation treatments already in use,\u201d says Stanley, who was part of the first round of BRAIN Initiative funding last year with fellow Georgia Tech researcher Craig Forest.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPeter Borden, a Ph.D. student in Stanley\u2019s lab, and Christian Waiblinger, a postdoctoral researcher in Stanley\u2019s lab, will also be contributing to the research.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMeanwhile, Payne is principal investigator for a project titled, \u201cConducting polymer nanowires for neural modulation.\u201d She\u2019s collaborating with Bret Flanders, a professor at Kansas State whose lab is working on new ways to insulate nanowires. Georgia Tech students Scott Thourson (a Bioengineering Ph.D. candidate) and Rohan Kadambi (undergrad in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) are helping to lead the effort.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cUnderstanding how the brain functions requires fundamentally new tools to probe individual neurons without damaging the surrounding tissue,\u201d says Payne, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis research will develop a prototype device that uses biocompatible conducting polymer nanowires to interface with individual neurons,\u201d says Payne. \u201cThe use of flexible conducting polymers in place of traditional metal, silicon, and carbon electrodes is expected to minimize disruption to the surrounding tissue.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELast year NIH awarded $46 million to the effort, designed to ultimately catalyze new treatments and cures for devastating brain disorders and diseases that are estimated by the World Health Organization to affect more than one billion people on the planet.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cGeorgia Tech is proud to play a role in this important global effort,\u201d says Steve Cross, executive vice president for research. \u201cThese grants are further evidence of Tech\u2019s reputation for conducting world-class bioengineering and bioscience research.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMedia Contacts:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:wrich@gatech.edu\u0022\u003EWalter Rich\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Manager\u003Cbr \/\u003EWallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering\u003Cbr \/\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Biomedical engineering professor Garrett Stanley contributing to global brain research initiative"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETwo researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are riding a second wave of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Two researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are riding a second wave of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative."}],"uid":"27513","created_gmt":"2015-10-19 13:23:44","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:47","author":"Walter Rich","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-10-19T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-10-19T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"460461":{"id":"460461","type":"image","title":"Professor Garrett Stanley, Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech","body":null,"created":"1449256361","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:12:41","changed":"1475895206","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:26","alt":"Professor Garrett Stanley, Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech","file":{"fid":"203593","name":"web-sized-wide-garrett_stanley.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/web-sized-wide-garrett_stanley_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/web-sized-wide-garrett_stanley_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":375296,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/web-sized-wide-garrett_stanley_0.jpg?itok=lUZnTASx"}}},"media_ids":["460461"],"groups":[{"id":"1254","name":"Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"249","name":"Biomedical Engineering"},{"id":"171494","name":"Stanley Garrett"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:wrich@gatech.edu\u0022\u003EWalter Rich\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Manager\u003Cbr \/\u003EWallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering\u003Cbr \/\u003EGeorgia Institute of Technology\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["wrich@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}