The Neuroscience Research Priority Area (NRPA) supports a "collaborative matrix," bringing together diverse groups of investigators, trainees, and research groups from across the University. The impressive depth of neuroscience expertise at UK combined with an engaged community has led to a dynamic and exciting research environment. In support of its mission to develop initiatives that reinforce and promote that success, the NRPA’s guiding strategy is to provide broad-based support to neuroscience researchers across the university.
Join the NRPA!
We welcome new/experienced research collaborators to join the Neuroscience RPA team.
The Latest in Neuroscience at UK
$3.1 million NIA grant to advance Sanders-Brown researcher’s groundbreaking dementia study
Maj-Linda Selenica, Ph.D., assistant professor in the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and associate director of outreach and partnerships at UK’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging has been working on research surrounding misfolding of the protein TDP-43 for several years now. Thanks to a recent $3.1 million grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the groundbreaking work will continue.
Linda Van Eldik, Sanders-Brown, featured prominently in AARP
“I’ve always been intrigued by inflammation,” says Linda Van Eldik, PhD, director of the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. She says chronic inflammation may be one of the primary drivers of Alzheimer’s. Dr. Van Eldik studies microglia, immune cells that patrol the brain by the tens of billions.
UK researchers explore the relationship between Down syndrome and Alzheimer's disease
“We are seeing Alzheimer’s pathology in people with Down syndrome in the age range of 40 to 45 years old, whereas the same Alzheimer’s pathology is typically seen in the general population in the 70 to 75 age range,” said Frederick Schmitt, Ph.D. Researchers involved in this work have discovered that people with Down syndrome show signs of Alzheimer’s brain pathology by the time they are 20, and that virtually all of them have this brain pathology by the time they reach 40.
