Neural Risk Management

If two minds are better than one, imagine what five of Texas A&M University’s brightest researchers in behavioral and cellular neuroscience can accomplish for the millions of Americans affected each year by the loss of neural function from injury, disease, and aging. An outstanding team of interdisciplinary faculty is currently combining expertise to explore the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the loss and recovery of function with aging, neurodegenerative disease, and neural injury.

The Recovery of Function group brings together expertise on neural injury, neurodegenerative disease, neuroimmunology, neural plasticity, and aging. One of the common themes uniting these areas is the neural environment.

“Exploration of the neural environment represents a major shift in neuroscience,” says Dr. Mary Meagher, professor of psychology in the Behavioral and Cellular Neuroscience program at Texas A&M. “We once focused only on neurons, but there is now an increased interest in how factors in the neurons’ environment affect disease.”

With the ability to link what is happening in a disease process at the cellular and molecular levels to behavioral and functional changes, Meagher and other psychologists in the program, including her husband and fellow Psychology Department Professor Jim Grau, bring a new level of understanding beyond the cellular or molecular level of neuroscience. Linking behavioral changes to cellular mechanisms will help researchers identify treatments designed to restore neural function.