traumatic brain injury

Scouting Out Summer Poster Day

Annual Event Held In-Person for First Time in Four Years

Amia Black poses with her poster at Summer Poster Day

A few weeks ago, NIH’s Natcher Conference Center bustled with the youthful scientific enthusiasm of IRP summer interns for the first time since 2019, the last time that the IRP’s Summer Poster Day was held in-person. At this year’s event, held on August 3 and 4, the hundreds of high school and college students who conducted research in IRP labs as part of NIH’s Summer Internship Program this year eagerly showed off the fruits of their labors — from discoveries about how weight loss drugs affect the brain to new insights into a potential treatment target for age-related vision loss. Read on to learn more about a few of these scientific upstarts and the research revelations they’ve helped uncover.

Explosive Blasts Wreak Havoc in Inner Ear

New Study Hones in on Causes of Hearing and Balance Problems

explosion

The US military presence in Afghanistan is coming to an end, yet the soldiers involved in the conflict will continue to experience its repercussions well into the future. Among other health effects, encountering the explosive devices widely deployed in the conflict can cause long-lasting hearing and balance difficulties. A recent collaboration between IRP researchers and scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research has produced important insights into the biological basis of those disabilities, which could eventually lead to better methods of preventing and treating them.

On the Cusp of Customized Concussion Care

Five Questions With Dr. Jessica Gill

football players

Each year, millions of Americans suffer sports-related concussions, and the number of youth suffering from these traumatic brain injuries has been rising. Blows to the head are common in sports such as football and hockey, and when these forces are strong enough to cause a concussion, they can harm the brain and impair cognitive functioning. Although concussions occur in staggering numbers, scientists do not fully understand what happens to the brain at the time of concussion or during the recovery period. However, that doesn’t mean they’re not trying.

A Summer Dive Into NIH History

With summer winding down, it's about time we took another dive into some NIH history! These new additions to the NIH Stetten Museum collection feature some of the most prominent investigators ever to walk the NIH campus, including a Nobel prize winner and a scientist who made important discoveries about how electricity travels between neurons.

Dr. Marshall Nirenberg

Lasker Scholar Program Achieves “Steady State”

NIH Lasker Scholars Nehal Mehta and Jessica Gill

The NIH Lasker Clinical Research Scholar Program, an initiative to support early-stage clinical researchers, has reached a milestone. First announced in December 2010, the program provides scholars with up to ten years of support: five to seven years as NIH tenure-track investigators, followed by three years additional funding at an extramural research institution, pending review, if they choose to leave the NIH. Our goal was to recruit a few scholars each year and have a “steady state” of 15 to 20 scholars on campus. We indeed are now up to 15 scholars, which meets this goal.

Exercise Releases Brain-Healthy Protein

Reblogged from the NIH Director's Blog.

Five images of different exercise activities

We all know that exercise is important for a strong and healthy body. Less appreciated is that exercise seems also to be important for a strong and healthy mind, boosting memory and learning, while possibly delaying age-related cognitive decline. How is this so? Researchers have assembled a growing body of evidence that suggests skeletal muscle cells secrete proteins and other factors into the blood during exercise that have a regenerative effect on the brain.