Congratulations to Berkeley Neuroscience postdoctoral fellows Kristen Delevich (Wilbrecht lab) and Johannes de Jong (Lammel lab) for being awarded 2019 NARSAD Young Investigator Grants from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation!
The Young Investigator Grants provide up to $35,000 per year for two years for promising early-career researchers studying topics broadly related to mental illness. The goal is to provide support for pilot studies that could lead to larger grants as the Young Investigators continue their training or begin faculty careers.
Delevich will use a newly developed fluorescent dopamine sensor to study dopamine and drugs that affect it, such as some antipsychotics, in the striatum of the brains of mice as they develop from juveniles into adults. The study could provide insight into dopamine dysregulation during adolescence.
Johannes de Jong
de Jong will study self-control in mice by determining whether they refrain from reward-seeking behavior in the face of aversive stimuli, and how that relates to neural activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) of the brain. The goal is to help describe the neural circuits underlying self-control within the NAc, which may lead to new treatment approaches.
To learn more about the award and the winning projects, please visit the BBR Foundation 2019 Young Investigator Grant Program