Semel awarded stimulus funds

Although two-thirds of the world is bilingual, current knowledge about the brain is largely based on biased sampling of monolingual subjects, said Xavier Cagigas, a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA. To obtain more representative results, researchers must sample diverse subjects.

Cagigas, like others who do research at the UCLA Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, will soon have the chance to increase the validity of his research in a collaborative environment.

After winning a national competition sponsored by the national economic stimulus package, the institute was awarded $14.9 million earlier this month to renovate three of the institute’s floors and to create the Integrative Phenotyping Center for Neuropsychiatry, said Dr. Nelson Freimer, director of the Center of Neurobehavioral Genetics and professor of psychiatry at UCLA.

The renovation will be completed in late 2012, allowing for projects across multiple disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, neuroimaging, physiology and genetics, said Robert Bilder, professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at UCLA.

The new center will provide a framework to study human phenotypes, which involves the interaction between genetics and the environment, said Cagigas, whose work is in neurobehavioral genetics and neuropsychology.

The three floors which currently comprise unused patient units that have not been renovated in nearly 50 years will become rooms for research and office space for faculty, staff, students and trainees, Freimer added.

“Some researchers are telling me that they don’t even have the space for a desk for a student (doing research) to sit at,” McCracken said.

Rooms with flexible dividers will allow the space to be reconfigured when necessary to comfortably accommodate participants and researchers.

Natural light will allow for energy savings, Freimer said.

Because Los Angeles is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the United States, research at the center will have the opportunity to explore historically underrepresented parts of the population, Cagigas said.

The common space will be a catalyst for additional research by bringing people of shared interest together, increasing efficiency and interaction, said Dr. James McCracken, UCLA professor and director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Semel Institute.

The floors will be allocated according to themes. One floor will focus on projects about autism and related disorders, while another area will be designated for studies about early onset anxiety and mood disorders, he added.

There is also a possibility that more opportunities will open up for both undergraduate and graduate students due to the increased space, McCracken added.

“The plan for the (Center) is to create a hub where investigators can coordinate their research programs into a true interdisciplinary framework,” Cagigas said.

Conference rooms will also be included in the floor designs and be available for various classes and seminars open to the entire UCLA community and its students, McCracken said.

“We will have more people than too few desiring to move into the space, so preliminary thinking (is taking place), although nothing is final,” McCracken added.

Renovating these 40,000 square feet is the first step in making research within the institute and the campus more integrated, Freimer said.

“The grant comes at a fantastic time because our clinical research working with human subjects is continuing to expand at a remarkable rate,” McCracken said.