Daniel Foster
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Neuroscience
Repetitive behaviors appear in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Tourette's syndrome and autism spectrum disorders. They can disrupt learning, social life and the ability to adapt.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Psychology
- Topics
repetitive behaviors
obsessive-compulsive disorder
Tourette's syndrome
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Oct 2026
What they work on
- Test whether M4 PAMs, drugs that boost the M4 acetylcholine receptor, reduce repetitive over-grooming in SAPAP3 knockout mice and other mouse models of repetitive behavior.
- Determine whether repetitive grooming is linked to excess glutamate and dopamine release in the striatum, using electrophysiology and optogenetics in genetically modified mice.
- Test whether M4 PAMs reduce repetitive behaviors by normalizing striatal dopamine and glutamate transmission, combining drug tools with brain-circuit recordings.
More about the research
Many patients do not respond to current drugs or behavioral therapy. Evidence points to the striatum, a brain region that combines inputs and shapes habits and goal-directed actions. Overactive signaling there by the chemical messengers dopamine and glutamate may underlie these behaviors. This project asks whether a brain receptor can be tuned to calm that overactivity.
Why it matters
Many people with OCD, Tourette's syndrome or autism have disabling repetitive behaviors that resist current treatments. Showing that M4 PAMs reduce these behaviors by normalizing striatal signaling in mice could support a new kind of drug for patients who do not respond to existing therapies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jerri Rook
Vanderbilt University, TN·Pharmacology
Test whether positive allosteric modulators of the M1 muscarinic receptor induce long-term depression of excitatory synapses by acting on M1 in prefrontal cortex pyramidal cells, and whether this requires phospholipase D rather than M1 in inhibitory neurons.
Thilo Womelsdorf
Vanderbilt University, TN·Neuroscience
Determine the dose-response efficacy of an M1 muscarinic receptor positive allosteric modulator on attention, working memory, effort control, cognitive flexibility and visuospatial problem solving in monkeys, using a multi-task touchscreen battery in home-cage kiosks.
Emily Olfson
Yale University, CT·Genetics·Early-career
Compare rates of de novo and rare inherited mutations between body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB) and control families, using whole-exome sequencing of 200 parent-child trios.
The school
University of South Carolina-Columbia: 22 labs on PI Pages, $277M a year on research, 425 research doctorates a year.
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