The Department of Neuroscience at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute is focused on understanding the inner workings of the nervous system, what goes wrong in the many neurological and psychiatric disorders that affect its function, and developing interventions for these conditions.
Our Mission
The Wertheim UF Scripps Department of Neuroscience’s mission is grounded in four pillars:
- Education and Mentorship: To cultivate the next generation of neuroscientists in a supportive and intellectually rigorous environment that values creativity, collaboration, and excellence.
- Discovery: To advance fundamental understanding of the biological mechanisms that govern brain function and behavior through intensive, collaborative, and multidisciplinary research.
- Mechanisms of Disease: To uncover the biological bases of brain disorders and identify both new and existing molecular and circuit-level targets for transformative interventions.
- Therapeutic Innovation: To translate biological insight into action by developing new therapeutic strategies and inventing candidate medicines for disorders of the nervous system.
Neuroscience at Wertheim UF Scripps
Training Programs
In-depth neuroscience training is available through our graduate programs.
Neuroscience at Wertheim UF Scripps
News from our Laboratories
The neuroscientists of The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute have been making major discoveries in the field for nearly two decades. Read about many of them here.
neuroscience at Wertheim UF Scripps
Neuroscience Faculty Directory
Our faculty have expertise in learning, memory, circuit wiring, metabolism, neurodegeneration, drug discovery and more.
Our Scope
The Neuroscience Department’s scientific interests are broad and span virtually all areas of modern neuroscience. To serve the department’s mission, our laboratories employ cutting-edge, multidisciplinary approaches including genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, cell biology, imaging, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, behavior, and drug discovery. Computational modeling, algorithm implementation, and artificial intelligence permeate of these approaches.
Areas of strength and emphasis include:
- Human and rodent genetic models of neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism, intellectual disability, movement disorders, and neurodegeneration
- Cellular, molecular, circuit, and systems-level mechanisms of cognitive function, including learning, memory, and decision-making
- Developmental neurobiology of synapse function and neural circuit wiring
- Transcriptional regulation and protein dynamics within brain cells that influence normal brain function and disease mechanisms
- Cellular, molecular, and circuit mechanisms of addiction
- Neuronal control of metabolism
- Development of neurotherapeutics for improving overall brain health
- Preclinical drug development for neurodevelopmental disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders, neurodegenerative disorders, and stroke
- Mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
- Invertebrate model systems including Aplysia and Drosophila
Research Detectives
TV Program Highlights Neuroscience Discoveries at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute
South Florida PBS recently featured our campus and our scientists in a new half-hour series called Research Detectives. In the premier episode, “Finding Lost Memory” host Trace Dominguez of Stargazers fame gives viewers an inside look at the scientific effort involved in understanding memory and forgetting, in pursuit of effective treatments for dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Contacts
Melissa Benilous
Trish McDonald
Gavin R Rumbaugh Ph.D.
Mailing address:
The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute, Neuroscience Department
130 Scripps Way, 3C2
Jupiter, Florida 33458