Project Grant R15DA050178

This federal Project Grant award, provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242), aims to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying decision-making and compulsive behavior. The $678,430 award will fund a 5-year research project at the University of California, Berkeley to test the hypothesis that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) inhibits habitual responses in the striatum to enable goal-directed behavior. The research...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the federal Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), provides $346,911 to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to conduct a cross-species study on the neurocognitive, genetic, and socio-environmental influences on developmental precursors to substance use disorders. The key objectives of the project are to: 1) Determine how early life environment impacts neurocognitive development and the...

This $378,800 Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), funds the development of computational modeling and simulation tools for analyzing mouse forelimb movements. The key products to be delivered include: A computational model based on optimal control theory to estimate muscle activity from kinematics and electromyography data, enabling researchers to study motor control using a larger set of forelimb...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279), will provide $417,861 to the Regents of the University of Minnesota to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying individual differences in reward-based learning strategies and their relationship to addiction-like behaviors. The research will focus on the role of dopamine signaling in the basolateral amygdala in mediating these learning processes and...

This $498,121.57 Project Grant award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), under the Alcohol Research Programs (CFDA 93.273), will support research to investigate the neural mechanisms that drive maladaptive coping strategies and subsequent alcohol use following exposure to stress. The principal investigator will utilize an animal model to study how dysfunction in the corticolimbic circuitry, specifically the prelimbic cortex and basolateral amygdala, contributes...

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded a $624,368 Project Grant (CFDA 93.242 - Mental Health Research Grants) to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to develop and validate a novel in vivo behavioral and neurophysiological assay for studying risk-taking propensity. The grant aims to optimize this assay to capture both extremes of risk-taking behavior, identify associated neurophysiological markers, and test the effects of drugs known to impact risk-taking in humans....

This federal Project Grant award of $207,307 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), under the Alcohol Research Programs (CFDA 93.273) federal grant program, supports research investigating the relationship between alcohol tolerance and alcohol self-administration in the Drosophila (fruit fly) model organism. The primary objectives are to systematically analyze genes affecting initial alcohol resistance/sensitivity and tolerance, develop a robust assay for...

This $1,447,919 Project Grant award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) under the Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs (CFDA 93.279) supports research into understanding and treating substance use disorders, particularly cocaine addiction. The key products or services to be delivered through this funding include: Testing the hypothesis that addiction involves a "hijacking" of physiological need-state substrates, in addition to reward substrates. The research will...

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under CFDA program 93.242 - Mental Health Research Grants, provides $189,540 to the University of Pittsburgh to support a research project titled "The Role of Cortico-Striatal Circuitry in Model-Based Decision-Making." The goal of the 5-year project is to investigate how neural activity in the prelimbic cortex and dorsomedial striatum, two brain regions implicated in compulsive disorders, represents...

This $358,012 Project Grant award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) under the Alcohol Research Programs (CFDA 93.273) supports research on sex differences in the effects of adolescent binge drinking on somatostatin (SST) cell dynamics and exploratory behavior in mice. The key objectives of the research are to: 1) investigate the role of L-type calcium channels (LTCCs) as a mechanism through which SST cells are altered due to adolescent drinking, and 2) examine...