Neurobiology
The overall goal of the Neurobiology program within the Stanley Center is to gain insights into pathways involved in the pathogenesis of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. These insights will be translated into cell-based and animal-based assays useful for drug discovery and evaluation. Dr. Li-Huei Tsai, a Professor at MIT in the Picower Center for Learning and Memory and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, heads our effort. Additionally, close ties to the MIT Neuroscience community are facilitating this work.
Currently there are two major efforts within this Neurobiology group: The DISC1 project, which seeks to understand the function of the putative schizophrenia risk gene DISC1, and the Behavioral Neurogenetics group, which seeks to establish animal models for evaluating behavior relevant to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and apply these models to Stanley Center projects for drug discovery and evaluation.