Gittis Receives Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Award for Studying Parkinson’s Disease

Carnegie Mellon University’s Aryn Gittis has been awarded a 2024 Neurobiology of Brain Disorders (NBD) Award by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience.

Gittis’ work is one of four projects selected for the honor. Each project, which focuses on the biology of brain diseases, will receive $100,000 annually in each of the next three years.

Gittis, a professor of biological sciences and the Neuroscience Institute, investigates how neural circuits control movement in humans and how to retrain those circuits after injury or damage. Her new research explores ways to tap into the brain’s plasticity to help ameliorate the effects of dopamine depletion — a key characteristic of Parkinson’s disease — and improve movement function for longer periods of time using electrical impulses.

Deep brain stimulation, in which wires implanted in the brain deliver a constant, nonspecific electrical charge, has been approved and used to help relieve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease for some time. However, it only addresses the symptoms, which reappear immediately when the charge is turned off. Gittis’ lab aims to find exactly what neuronal pathways are required for locomotor recovery, how electrical pulses can be “tuned” to affect just these subpopulations, and how these subpopulations can be stimulated to essentially repair themselves, offering longer-lasting relief from symptoms, even without ongoing stimulation.

Preliminary work shows promise: Working with a dopamine-depleted mouse model, Gittis and her team have identified specific subpopulations of neurons in the brain stem necessary for the relief of symptoms. Excitingly, when stimulated with a pulse of carefully tuned electricity (rather than a constant flow) the cells' activity is changed in a way that results in hours of improved mobility with no further stimulation. Her research aims to determine whether these activity changes can be made more permanent to start healing and rewiring neural circuits.

The NBD Awards support innovative research by U.S. scientists studying neurological and psychiatric diseases. The awards encourage collaboration between basic and clinical neuroscience to translate laboratory discoveries about the brain and nervous system into diagnoses and therapies to improve human health.

“From expanding our understanding of how brain diseases develop to exploring novel new therapies for brain disorders, the researchers chosen for this year’s award are breaking important ground in neurological research on neurological diseases,” said Dr. Ming Guo, chair of the awards committee, Laurie & Steven C. Gordon Chair of Neurosciences, and professor in Neurology & Pharmacology at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. “They are studying the underpinnings of devastating and life-altering conditions, including malignant brain tumors, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, advancing ideas that could lead to new insights into how the brain works and potentially identify cures for currently incurable neurological disorders in the future.”

The application for letters of intent for the 2025 awards opens July 30, 2024.

The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience is an independent organization funded solely by the McKnight Foundation of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and led by a board of prominent neuroscientists from around the country. The McKnight Foundation has supported neuroscience research since 1977. The Foundation established the Endowment Fund in 1986 to carry out one of the intentions of founder William L. McKnight (1887–1978), one of the early leaders of the 3M Company.

In addition to the NBD Awards, the endowment fund also provides annual award funding through the McKnight Scholar Awards, supporting neuroscientists in the early stages of their research careers.