Neil Harris
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Neuroscience
After a mild or moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI), most brain cells survive. Yet they cannot work efficiently, and this can leave lasting problems with thinking and behavior.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
Pharmacology
- Topics
traumatic brain injury
concussion
metabolic depression
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Test how acute metabolic depression after TBI changes brain functional connectivity and reorganization over time in rats, using resting-state functional MRI with connectome analysis plus behavioral testing.
- Determine whether DHF, a small molecule that activates the BDNF receptor TrkB, reduces early metabolic depression and later enhances synaptic plasticity and cognitive outcome.
- Test whether DHF and exercise, alone or combined and given early or delayed, boost brain connectivity and function in male and female rats.
- Use statistically driven, subject-level measures of tissue damage, swelling and atrophy as covariates to assess whether offsetting metabolic depression potentiates rehabilitation.
More about the research
One proposed reason is metabolic depression (MD), a drop in the energy brain cells can produce in the early period after injury. Without enough energy, neural circuits cannot meet demand or rewire through plasticity. MD may therefore limit how much patients gain from rehabilitation. This project asks whether restoring brain energy early can make later rehabilitation work better.
Why it matters
People recovering from concussion and other TBI often have lasting cognitive problems, and rehabilitation helps them unevenly. If early energy failure in brain cells limits recovery, then a drug like DHF given with exercise could make rehabilitation more effective. This could include patients whose rehabilitation is delayed by other injuries. The work may inform the timing and design of treatment after brain injury.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Helen Kamens
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Neuroscience
Test whether baseline resting-state functional connectivity, measured by rsfMRI in awake male and female C57BL/6J mice, predicts how much morphine each mouse later drinks voluntarily.
Itamar Kahn
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Chart how brain network organization, especially system segregation, changes across the mouse lifespan by repeatedly scanning the same awake mice with resting-state fMRI from 3 to 21 months of age.
Timothy Meier
Medical College of Wisconsin, WI·Neuroscience
Test whether cytomegalovirus (CMV) serostatus changes brain recovery after sport-related concussion, measured by diffusion MRI, cortical thickness and resting-state functional connectivity in CARE Consortium athletes.
The school
University of California-Los Angeles: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 803 research doctorates a year.
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