Projects per year
Project Details
Description
PROJECT SUMMARY: Overall
Addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disorder resulting from perturbations in neural circuits. Delineating these
circuit perturbations should provide a host of opportunities to develop new therapies for addiction prevention and
treatment. New technologies in neuroscience are revolutionizing our ability to measure and intervene in specified
neural circuits. To take advantage, these technologies should be broadly distributed. We propose to create a
NIDA Center for Neural Circuits in Addiction at the University of Minnesota (UMN) to further develop and
disseminate these new techniques to produce groundbreaking work in addiction neuroscience. Based on our
collective expertise, our strong base of collaborative addiction research and the support provided by our
institution, our group at the UMN is in an excellent position to form this Center. It would comprise four new
Research Cores: 1) The Viral Innovation Core (VIC) will assist investigators in applying state-of-the-art viral
manipulation approaches to their studies of the anatomical, molecular and neural circuit bases of addiction. This
Core will provide expertise for design of custom vectors, including guidance on combinations of AAV serotype,
promoters, and fluorescent tags; 2) The Structural Circuits Core (SCC) will offer state-of-the-art anatomical
mapping of neural circuits involved in addiction. Integrated with the University Imaging Center and UMN
Informatics Institute, SCC will provide automated use of brain clearing technology paired with meso- and micro-
scale imaging of the CNS; 3) The Imaging Cells during Behavior Core (ICBC) will offer a range of imaging
modalities to monitor brain activity in behaving animals across a range of spatial and temporal scales. These
modalities include fiber photometry, head-mounted miniature microscopes (“miniscopes”) and novel wide field-
of-view optical imaging during behavior at both the mesoscopic and cellular levels. 4) The Addiction
Connectome Core (ACC) will create a computational platform to integrate multimodal functional and structural
data to test relationships between exposure to addictive drugs and neural connectivity. Availability of this platform
should enable outside scholars from anywhere in the world to delineate drug-modified connectivity patterns and
addiction-relevant biological variables, facilitating the identification of biomarkers for mental function and
dysfunction. Our Center would provide to the research community: a) Education and training in new technologies;
b) Access to tools, reagents and expertise for data collection and analysis; c) Further development and adoption
of new technologies; d) Catalysis of new collaborations among users; and e) Dissemination of resulting research
and new technologies to the wider addiction research community. The Pilot Project Core will facilitate use of the
Cores for innovative pilot studies and push the envelope in neural circuit research. Under the Center Director’s
leadership, the Administrative Core, with a panel of expert scientific advisors, would coordinate and support the
efforts of the individual Cores. Our goal is for the Center to be a national resource for neural circuit research
technologies that fuels high-impact, collaborative research to address critical knowledge gaps in our field.
Status | Active |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 7/1/20 → 5/31/24 |
Funding
- National Institute on Drug Abuse: $1,945,162.00
- National Institute on Drug Abuse: $164,301.00
- National Institute on Drug Abuse: $1,941,480.00
- National Institute on Drug Abuse: $2,128,432.00
- National Institute on Drug Abuse: $1,944,149.00
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Projects
- 6 Active
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Addiction Connectome Core
Hayden, B. Y. & Hayden, B. B. Y.
National Institute on Drug Abuse
7/1/20 → 5/31/24
Project: Research project
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Imaging Cells during Behavior Core
Ebner, T. J. & Ebner, T. T. J.
National Institute on Drug Abuse
7/1/20 → 5/31/24
Project: Research project
-
Viral Innovation Core
Wickman, K. D. & Wickman, K. K. D.
National Institute on Drug Abuse
7/1/20 → 5/31/24
Project: Research project