Sadegh Nabavi recognized as a Lundbeck Ascending Investigator
With this honorable title comes a grant of DKK 6,095,007, distributed over four years, which Sadegh Nabavi will use to delve deeper into the neural circuitry involved in attention-dependent learning.
When the Lundbeck Foundation allocates the Ascending Investigator Grants it is with the purpose to support talented and established scientists to further develop their careers through support of research that may result in a better fundamental understanding of the brain and/or improved prevention, diagnosis and treatment of brain and nervous-system diseases.
One of this rounds receipients is DANDRITE alumni Group Leader, Sadegh Nabavi. He is Associate Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and a DANDRITE affilated researcher studying learning and memory.
With this grant Sadegh and his group will embark on a new research project aimed at mapping the neural circuitry for processing an attention-dependent learning. More specifically understanding the ability to associate events in time.
This ability is one of the most common forms of learning, and yet it remains one of the most puzzling ones. How does the brain achieve this? One of the outstanding features of such a form of learning is that it requires the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus during the learning process. The second feature is that successful learning needs attention. In this project, Sadeghs group has two main aims:
The first aim is to investigate how the mPFC and hippocampus contribute to the learning. For the second aim, they ask at which stage(s) of the learning attention is required, and how distraction disrupts neuronal processing in the mPFC, leading to impaired learning. with precise temporal inactivation of neuronal activity.
In this round, the foundation granted a total of DKK 84,031,148.00 for 15 projects.