Biology of Complex Brain Disorders – BCBD

Topics

• Applications that study molecular and cellular mechanisms of mental and psychiatric disorders including but not limited to schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, addiction, intellectual and/or developmental disability, sudden infant death syndrome, and restless legs syndrome.
• Applications on the molecular, cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying development of novel, scalable assay platforms to measure neurobiological endpoints with the goal of building a pipeline to be used in the context of target identification and drug discovery.
• Applications that are hypothesis-driven or discovery-based/hypothesis-generating but focused on the critical interface between molecular and cellular mechanisms and disease-associated processes.
• Applications that study the basic biology of candidate gene products and/or potentially relevant signaling cascades and which seek to identify novel cellular and/or molecular interactions associated with these as well as how perturbations might impact upon their normal function.

Shared Interests and Overlaps

There is overlapping and shared interest with the following review panels:

There is shared interest with PMD and BCBD in applications that study complex mental disorders. Molecular and cellular aspects of mental disorders are reviewed in BCBD while those that involve relevant animal models of these disorders are reviewed in PMD.

There is shared interest between BCBD and NSDR in reviewing applications focused on neurodevelopmental processes. Applications focused on molecular and cellular mechanisms associated with neuropsychiatric brain disorders are generally reviewed in BCBD, whereas applications focused on normal nervous system development and repair are generally reviewed in NSDR.

There are shared interests in reviewing applications that focus on molecular and genetic aspects of brain disorders between MNG and BCBD. Applications that emphasize utilization of novel tools, methods and approaches or novel applications of existing methodologies and approaches can be reviewed in MNG. Applications with focus on the dissection of candidate gene pathways and basic causative cellular and molecular mechanisms that are associated with neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders are reviewed in BCBD. 

There are shared interests between NC and BCBD in synaptic and circuit mechanisms that are associated with brain disorders. Applications that have a focus on synaptic structure, biology or plasticity and neurotransmitters in the context of neural communication and circuits are reviewed in NC. Those applications that investigate synaptic development and integration and neural circuitry as a part of etiological mechanisms underlying complex brain disorders can be reviewed in BCBD.