Institute Updates

Become a Member of the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience brings together faculty across the University of Rochester who are engaged in neuroscience research. 

Members will receive exclusive benefits for belonging to the Del Monte network:

• Eligibility to apply and receive funding for pilot projects, or other activities that support Institute goals
• Print and email subscription to our quarterly publication, Neuroscience
• Opportunities to volunteer for community outreach activities
• Access to Institute listservs to promote relevant activities
• Listing on the Institute website, using information from your University profile to facilitate networking and visibility

You must be a faculty member or postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester with an interest in brain science to become a member. Click here to apply.

Neuroscience Pilot Grants Available

Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The Ernest J. Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience is pleased to announce the availability of up to 21 pilot project awards (maximum budget of $50,000 per award) to support novel basic, clinical and translational projects in the neurosciences. These awards will be supported under five programs for 2019 and are open to all faculty members across both the Medical School and the Undergraduate Campus.  Funds available for this year’s program are $840,000. 

The application deadline is 5:00 pm on Monday, March 18, 2019.

Not All Sleep is Equal When It Comes to Cleaning the Brain

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

New research shows how the depth of sleep can impact our brain’s ability to efficiently wash away waste and toxic proteins.  Because sleep often becomes increasingly lighter and more disrupted as we become older, the study reinforces and potentially explains the links between aging, sleep deprivation, and heightened risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

“Sleep is critical to the function of the brain’s waste removal system and this study shows that the deeper the sleep the better,” said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and lead author of the study. “These findings also add to the increasingly clear evidence that quality of sleep or sleep deprivation can predict the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia.”

The study, which appears in the journal Science Advances, indicates that the slow and steady brain and cardiopulmonary activity associated with deep non-REM sleep are optimal for the function of the glymphatic system, the brain’s unique process of removing waste. The findings may also explain why some forms of anesthesia can lead to cognitive impairment in older adults. 

Grant Marks Two Decades of NIH Support for Muscular Dystrophy Research

Monday, February 25, 2019

The University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) has received $8 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support pioneering research on muscular dystrophy. The grant, which is a renewal of URMC’s Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center, will fund ongoing work to investigate the genetic mechanisms and progression of this complex multi-system disease, research that has led scientists to the threshold of potential new therapies for myotonic dystrophy.

Neuroscience Professor and Alumna Inducted to Alpha Omega Alpha

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Congratulations to Neuroscience associate professor Martha J. Gdowski, Ph.D. and Neuroscience Graduate Program alumna Nguyen Mai, Ph.D. for being inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honor society! Election to Alpha Omega Alpha is an honor signifying a lasting commitment to professionalism, leadership, scholarship, research, and community service. A lifelong honor, membership in the society confers recognition for a physician's dedication to the profession and art of healing.

Third Annual Rochester Brain Bee sends Brighton High School Student to National Competition

Monday, February 4, 2019

On Saturday, February 2, seven high school students competed for the title of Rochester’s Brainiest Teenager. The students came from five schools in the Greater Rochester Area and competed in a grueling day with three rounds of 30 neuroscience questions in front of a panel of University of Rochester researchers. Ania Majewska, Ph.D., Chris Holt, Ph.D., Liz Romanski, Ph.D., Jude Mitchel, Ph.D., and Heather Natola, Ph.D., served as judges for the competition.

The quiz-style competition was structured so that each student had the opportunity to answer every question and the student with the highest cumulative score was declared the winner. The competition was won by Emily Han who correctly answered 69 out of 90 questions. Emily will receive a trip to the National Brain Bee in Hershey, Pa. in April, sponsored by the Rochester Society for Neuroscience and the Department of Neuroscience. The National Brain Bee will consist of two days of neuroscience and neurology questions on topics such as patient diagnosis, neuroimaging analysis, pathology, and general brain facts.

The Brain Bee was organized by the University of Rochester Brain Awareness Campaign Committee as a kick-off to 2019. The Rochester Brain Awareness Campaign was founded in 2013 and continues to offer neuroscience outreach for free to local schools. Since its founding, the team has visited 25 schools and reached 4,000 students with 200 volunteers. It has also had booth exhibits at Rochester Marches for Science, attended a St. John Fisher’s science career day, and have had an official Rochester Girl Scouts badge every year since 2017. The organization is entirely student-run, and is supported by Ania Majewska, Ph.D., and the Rochester Society for Neuroscience.

Study suggests how high blood pressure might contribute to Alzheimer’s

Monday, January 28, 2019

The brain’s system for removing waste is driven primarily by the pulsations of adjoining arteries, University of Rochester neuroscientists and mechanical engineers report in a new study. They also show that changes in the pulsations caused by high blood pressure slow the removal of waste, reducing its efficiency.

This might explain the association between high blood pressure and Alzheimer’ disease, the researchers say. Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia among older adults, is characterized by abnormal clumps and tangled bundles of fibers in the brain.

The study, reported in Nature Communications, builds upon groundbreaking discoveries about the brain’s waste removal system by Maiken Nedergaard, co-director of the University’s Center for Translational Neuromedicine. Nedergaard and her colleagues were the first to describe how cerebrospinal fluid is pumped into brain tissue and flushes away waste. Subsequent research by her team has shown that this glymphatic waste removal system is more active while we sleep and can be damaged by stroke and trauma.

This latest research shows “in much greater depth and much greater precision than before” how the glymphatic system functions in the perivascular spaces that surround arteries in the outer brain membrane, says Douglas Kelley, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and an expert in fluid dynamics. His lab is collaborating with Nedergaard’s team as part of a $3.2 million National Institute on Aging grant.

For this study, Humberto Mestre, a PhD student in Nedergaard’s lab, injected minute particles in the cerebrospinal fluid of mice, and then used two-photon microscopy to create videos showing the particles as they moved through the perivascular spaces.

In The News: UR study on brain waves may allow doctors to diagnose autism earlier

Friday, January 25, 2019

The following is an except of an article by Josh Navarro that originally appeared on WROC/RochesterFirst.com: 

A new study to help understand brain waves in children with autism is underway right now at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Their aim is to foster earlier detection and foster better therapies in the future.

Children with autism respond differently when they hear a sound such as music or see an illustration. Honing in the difference in brain waves between autistic children and children who do not have autism, is part of a new study  at Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at URMC.

“If you can provide a biological marker that could be reproduced earlier in a child's development, then that therapy can start earlier, the better outlook for that particular child,” said Dr. Evan Myers, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cognitive Neurophysiology Lab in the University of Rochester Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience. 

Researchers will place a electroencephalography cap and have kids observe different images on a computer screen. The findings will determine the next step through clinical trials with the goal of diagnosing a child with autism a lot sooner. 

Common test of mental state understanding is biased

Thursday, January 24, 2019

The National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) recommends a test, called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RMET). Here, participants view 36 black and white photographs, originally selected from magazine articles, of solely the eyes of Caucasian female and male actors. Participants then decide which of four adjectives—such as panicked, incredulous, despondent, or interested—best describes the mental state expressed in the eyes (the correct answer has been generated through consensus ratings).

But there’s a problem. Using data from more than 40,000 people, a new study published this month in Psychological Medicine concludes that the test is deeply flawed.

“It’s biased against the less educated, the less intelligent, and against ethnic and racial minorities,” says lead author David Dodell-Feder, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “It relies too heavily on a person’s vocabulary, intelligence, and culturally-biased stimuli. That’s particularly problematic because it’s endorsed by the national authority in our field and therefore the most widely-used assessment tool.”

Dr. Kuan Hong Wang comes to the University of Rochester

Monday, January 21, 2019

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Wang to the University of Rochester Medical Center, the Department of Neuroscience and the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience from the NIH.

Dr. Wang comes to us as the former chief of the Unit on Neural Circuits and Adaptive Behaviors at the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Wang received his B.A. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College and his Ph.D. from the University of California at San Francisco, where he studied the molecular regulators of sensory axon growth and branching during development with Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Dr. Wang obtained postdoctoral training with Susumu Tonegawa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he examined the ways in which cortical neurons respond to an animal’s experience by directly visualizing the molecular activity of a given set of neurons over several days in the live animal. With this approach, he revealed a physiological function of neural activity regulated gene Arc in sharpening stimulus-specific responses in visual cortex.