NEW: Center for Neural Circuits in Addiction with Cellular Imaging Core
ME Assistant Professor Suhasa Kodandaramaiah will be co-leading the Cellular Imaging Core for the new Center for Neural Circuits in Addiction. The center seeks to transform researchers' ability to understand how the brain changes with addiction — a struggle faced by over 450,000 Minnesotans. The center's leadership team hopes that increased awareness of the biological basis of addiction will not only help develop new and more effective treatments but will also help in de-stigmatizing addiction and helping it be thought of as a chronic brain-based medical condition rather than a moral failing.
The new center, funded by a $9.9 million grant from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, will have four cores that work together to discover how the brain changes with addiction. The Cellular Imaging Core will engineer and apply new technologies for imaging neural circuits mediating addictive behavior at high spatial and temporal resolution.