UF researchers win McKnight grants

Does the way the body metabolizes a common mineral impair mental function later in life? Can learning to play the piano help older adults fight memory loss? These are among questions University of Florida investigators will explore with the aid of $750,000 in grants from the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute of UF.

In keeping with the mission of the late Evelyn McKnight, a former nurse who was deeply interested in why memory often fades as people age, the McKnight Brain Institute bestowed 10 UF projects with up to $75,000 each in seed money to investigate memory loss in older adults.

The brain institute was named for the McKnights in May 2000, after the McKnight Brain Research Foundation board of trustees gifted the institute with $15 million to support aggressive research.

“Competition for these awards is truly campuswide,” said William Luttge, Ph.D., executive director of the McKnight Brain Institute. “Of the 10 awards granted this year, the principal investigators come from eight different departments and five different colleges.”

The researchers represent the departments of materials science and engineering, music education, medicine, neurological surgery, neuroscience, psychology, pharmaceutics, and pharmacology and therapeutics. That involves the colleges of Engineering, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Medicine, and Pharmacy, as well as the Whitney Laboratory in St. Augustine and the Malcom Randall Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Gainesville.

“The McKnight grant will give me the opportunity to explore something I’ve wondered about for a long time,” said Christopher Batich, Ph.D., a professor of materials science and engineering who will study whether the deposition of iron oxides is related to neurodegenerative processes. Iron is an essential mineral in the human diet.

“Mental function varies tremendously among individuals as they age,” Batich said. “If we can determine the mechanism of damage, we have a better chance to go forward and figure out how people can maintain mental function.”

Elsewhere, music and neuroscience blend in a proposal to study how piano instruction affects executive memory functions, according to Timothy S. Brophy, Ph.D., an assistant professor of music education.

“Jennifer Bugos, a doctoral student, combines extensive interests in neuroscience and music,” Brophy said. “She’s studied with Dr. Purvis Bedenbaugh, a neuroscience professor with the McKnight Brain Institute, and pursued with great vigor the idea that active music making will enhance executive memory function in the elderly population. She’ll be one of two persons who will give lessons to residents in retirement villages and bring back data, which we will analyze together.

We believe this study can raise good, research-based questions that may lead to something that will improve the quality of life of all elderly Americans.”

The projects receive internal reviews in addition to evaluations from a panel of scientific experts from outside UF, Luttge said. They also undergo a rigorous post-award progress evaluation.

Luttge and Doug Anderson, Ph.D., chairman of the neuroscience department in the College of Medicine and the acting deputy director of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Research Service, notified the successful applicants:

·W. Keith Berg, a professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Science’s psychology department, will study whether it’s possible to improve how older adults perform on tasks requiring short-term memory with memory-strategy training and whether the training affects the pattern of activation in the prefrontal cortex of aging adults during problem solving.

·Jeffrey A. Hughes, Ph.D., an associate professor in the College of Pharmacy’s pharmaceutics department, seeks to determine whether age-related loss of memory and reduced neurotransmitter activity can be reduced by nerve growth factor, which is a naturally occurring protein.

·Michael A. King, Ph.D., a research biologist at the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center and an associate research professor with the College of Medicine’s neuroscience department, will study whether the level of strength of brain synapses is related to learning and memory deficits, especially in regard to aging.

·Leonid Moroz, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Whitney Laboratory and in the College of Medicine's neuroscience department, plans to use genomic approaches to investigate the role of neuronal and dendritic messenger RNA in regard to learning and synaptic changes using a simpler nervous system of a sea slug as the experimental model.

·Roger L. Papke, Ph.D., an associate professor of pharmacology and therapeutics in the College of Medicine, will study a subset of neurotransmitters in the hippocampus—with a focus on nicotinic cholinergic receptors—in an effort to provide new test systems to evaluate therapeutic strategies designed to prevent or reverse age-related memory dysfunction.

·Steven N. Roper, M.D., the Edward Shedd Wells professor of stereotactic and functional neurosurgery in the College of Medicine, will study cellular memory mechanisms in the hippocampus of people and animals with temporal lobe epilepsy. Temporal lobe epilepsy produces synaptic reorganization in the hippocampus and is a major form of acquired memory disorder in humans. Roper will study how this synaptic reorganization affects synaptic plasticity with a goal of remediating memory deficits in people with acquired memory disorders.

·Gerry Shaw, Ph.D., a professor in the College of Medicine’s neuroscience department, and Michael R. Bubb, M.D., an associate professor in the college’s rheumatology division, will study whether the function of an abundant brain protein—myristoylated alanine-rich C kinase substrate—becomes altered with aging and how it relates to memory loss.

·Wolfgang Streit, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience, will investigate how microglia—cells that make up the brains internal immune system—are involved in age-related memory loss.