By Christi Fish
Public Affairs Specialist
(June 24, 2009)—UTSA researcher Brian Derrick hopes to find out soon how the brain saves episodic memories. An associate professor in theDepartment of Biology and the Neurosciences Institute, the UTSA neurobiologist has won $917,000 in funding from the National Institutes of Health to research how neurons store information in the brain and how they decide what to store or discard.
Every 16 hours, the brain’s hippocampus creates 6,000-9,000 new neurons in the dentate gyrus, the portion of the brain believed to play a significant role in preserving episodic (or autobiographical) memory. According to Derrick, the key lies in the difference between learning and memory.
“Learning is the acquisition of new knowledge,” he noted. “Memory is the persistence of learning over time. This kind of memory does not simply involve ‘what’ and ‘where’ events occurred; ‘when’ also is a crucial variable.
“We believe the continual generation of new neurons in both rats and humans serve as a temporal marker for highly similar memories. Because time also plays a role in memories, the contribution of these new neurons to episodic memory is the focus of this four-year grant.”
Although memory loss is most commonly associated with aging, it also is symptomatic of more debilitating diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, which afflict 9.3 million people worldwide.
CRTS Host the “Write Winning Grants” Workshop
A Regional Grant Writing Seminar for Minority Institutions
This program is organized by the FASEB Career Resources/FASEB MARC Program in association with Grant Writers’ Seminars and Workshops (GWSW) and the National Institutes of Health.
It will be held at the University of Texas-San Antonio, September 4th, 2009 from 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
UTSA - Denham Room
Speaker:
David C. Morrison, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Member
Grant Writers’ Seminars and Workshops, LLC
Application due prior to August 19, 2009
Brief Bio of Dr. Morrison -
Education:
Ph.D., Yale (Molecular Biology and Biophysics)
Postdoctoral research fellow National Institutes of Health and Scripps Research Institute.
Faculty Positions (in chronological order):
Scripps Research Institute (supported by NIH Research Career Development Award)
Emory University School of Medicine
University of Kansas Medical Center (Kansas Masons Endowed Chair; Professor and Chairman, Department of Microbiology; Associate Director - Research, Cancer Center)
Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City (Director of Medical Research), and University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine (Sosland Endowed Chair and Professor)
Baker University, Visiting Distinguished Professor
Professional: Continuously funded since the early 1970s by NIH (including a ten-year MERIT award), foundations, and industry. Member of multiple national review panels and advisory groups; recipient of awards for teaching excellence and innovation. Received first ever Faculty Service Award from the Mayo Center for Translational Sciences Activities, 2007.
By Christi Fish
Public Affairs Specialist
This year, President Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), better known as the stimulus bill, in response to America’s economic crisis. UTSA researchers have submitted 17 proposals to the National Institutes of Health for stimulus funding consideration.
Among other items, the legislation allocates $111 billion toward infrastructure and science including approximately $21.5 billion through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies for scientific research and development projects.
Since the ARRA adoption, scientists across the country have eyed the additional funds to boost their research. By the first major stimulus-funding deadline, UTSA researchers submitted the following 17 proposals to NIH. This summer, funding decisions will be communicated to principal investigators of the awarded proposals.
