Dr. Isabel Pérez-Otaño, a researcher in the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at CIMA, has been given an Independent Investigator Award by the NARSAD Foundation,  "The Brain and Behavior Fund". Dr. Pérez-Otaño's team will research the molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases and neural development. Their strategy, which forms part of an international research project, is to find out how these diseases develop, and then design alternative forms of treatment which tackle the disease from its onset. "Recent studies show that these diseases begin with failure in the synapses, which are microscopic structures that connect neurons and code information in vast neuronal circuist. Our studies center on combating this failure, which occurs before neuronal death has taken place, so that in the future we will be able to prevent the disease", she explained.

"For example, we know that the earliest alteration in Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, or in neurodevelopmental diseases like schizophrenia and autism, is the brain's inability to preserve and remodel synaptic connections. The failure of these two processes, which are critical for the creation and maintenance of memory, leads to the onset of cognitive difficulties and memory problems". The work of the research team is focusing on studying the mechanisms which control the remodeling and elimination of synapses. In the last few years, their results have been published in leading journals such as Neuron and Nature Neuroscience.

The North American NARSAD Foundation is the largest non-profit organization which awards research funds for projects on brain and behavior disorders. It supports pure and clinical research aimed at finding treatment for mental and developmental disorders, and for neurodegenerative disorders, which have similar symptoms and molecular mechanisms. similares. Dr. Pérez-Otaño's project, which has been awarded $100,000, will study how the defects in signaling mediated by the NMDA receptor interfere in the remodeling of the synapses. The NMDA receptors receive and process the information transmitted by an excitatory neurotransmitter, glutamate. Their special properties make them key molecules which code information stored while the brain is developing, or in processes related to learning and memory.