College of Arts and Sciences Newsroom

By Dave Larsen

The National Institutes of Health awarded a University of Dayton neuroscientist $413,681 to study the significance of the calcium-handling protein phospholamban in the brain possibly involved in the development of disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and ADHD.

Pothitos “Takis” Pitychoutis, a professor in the UD Department of Biology, is researching intricate calcium-cycling processes in a crucial structure in the brain that regulates complex behaviors such as sensory processing, attention and sleep.

“This calcium-handling player appears to have a special role in preserving calcium dynamics in the neurons of the thalamic reticular nucleus, an important yet poorly understood region of the brain,” Pitychoutis said. “Overall, gaining insights into the regulation of calcium-cycling processes in the brain may pave the way for developing new, safer and more effective drug therapies for the treatment of these debilitating and costly brain disorders.”

The three-year NIH grant is an academic research enhancement award, which supports meritorious research at undergraduate-focused institutions, with the goals of exposing students to research and strengthening the school’s research environment. The funding will support one doctoral student and seven undergraduate students.

Pitychoutis’ co-investigator is Aaron Sathyanesan, UD assistant professor of biology. They also will work with several undergraduate honors thesis students, who will participate with support from the University Honors Program. 

“Working on this project will help prepare some of our talented students to pursue postgraduate studies in neuroscience and follow careers in industry and academia, as well as in biomedical and health-related professions,” Pitychoutis said. “This neuroscience research experience will have far-reaching implications for our students and will help them solidify their vocational aspirations.”

More than 100 students are enrolled in UD’s neuroscience minor program. The University’s new neuroscience co-major is slated to start in fall 2025.

A co-major, which compliments the student’s primary major, has the same number of credits as a major, but not the full scope of requirements. This approach allows UD to offer in-demand majors in a more efficient way, said Danielle Poe, College of Arts and Sciences dean.

“It’s exciting because we have a lot of depth in our neuroscience specialization in UD's Department of Biology,” Poe said. “Now students will be able to show on transcripts the depth of their knowledge and learning.”

The NIH grant builds on findings from Pitychoutis’ lab under a $148,077 National Institutes of Health grant awarded in 2018. His team discovered the function of phospholamban, which regulates calcium in the heart, extends beyond the cardiovascular system to also influence the brain. They determined the loss of this protein’s function in the thalamic reticular nucleus results in abnormal behaviors in mice, such as hyperactivity and motor impulsivity.

Preliminary research on that project was funded by a 2017 grant from UD’s STEM Catalyst Initiative, which supports faculty and student research in the sciences, engineering and mathematics with the potential to rise to national prominence.

“The University’s investment in meritorious research and support of faculty, as well as graduate and undergraduate student researchers, has given us strong momentum that has allowed us to build a nationally competitive neuroscience research program to decipher the role of phospholamban in the brain,” Pitychoutis said. “We do a great job promoting neuroscience research and education at UD.”

Under the new grant, researchers will perform calcium photometry measurements, which can help them understand the function of neurons within a specific region of the brain.

“This gives us unprecedented access to how the brain region of our interest — the thalamic reticular nucleus — functions during a cognitive task at a cellular level,” said Sathyanesan, who has a joint appointment in the UD Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “The significance of this work is that we are able to directly correlate cellular level activity to behavioral deficits, which is important to understand in the context of neuropsychiatric disorders.”

Pitychoutis said students who are engaged in the project will get the chance to work with state-of-the-art behavioral, neurochemical and neural-molecular techniques to help them build strong research competencies.

“Our students will be involved in all aspects of this research; from designing, completing and troubleshooting the experimental protocols, to performing statistical and bioinformatics analyses and writing research manuscripts,” he said. “They will serve as co-authors in resulting publications and participate in research presentations at the local, regional and international levels to help disseminate the new knowledge that we will gain from this grant.”

Top photo: (Left to right) Doctoral student Hayden Ott '24, Marc Nya, Rachel Zeller, Aaron Sathyanesan, Pothitos "Takis" Pitychoutis and Olivia Schilder.

Middle photo: Aaron Sathyanesan (left) and Pothitos "Takis" Pitychoutis.