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Papers by Michelle Freund

Biopreservation and Biobanking, 2016

Biological Psychiatry, 2014

Handbook of clinical neurology, 2018

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) NeuroBioBank is a federally funded research resource for ... more The National Institutes of Health (NIH) NeuroBioBank is a federally funded research resource for human neurologic diseases and disorders. This chapter will discuss the principles that guided the creation of the NIH NeuroBioBank and the rationale for the resource model selected. In addition, we will describe some performance metrics in the first 2 years and highlight recent advances in biomedical neuroscience that could only have been achieved using postmortem human tissues. The NIH NeuroBioBank was created in order to increase availability of high-quality postmortem human brain tissues to the research community across a broad spectrum of neurologic diseases and disorders, and to achieve economies of scale over previous funding and organizational models. In addition, we aim to increase public awareness about the value of human tissue donation for research by providing web-based information to the public and through active outreach to disease advocacy communities. Studies with human b...

Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology

Recent studies in animal models demonstrate that certain misfolded proteins associated with neuro... more Recent studies in animal models demonstrate that certain misfolded proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases can support templated misfolding of cognate native proteins, to propagate across neural systems, and to therefore have some of the properties of classical prion diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The National Institute of Aging convened a meeting to discuss the implications of these observations for research priorities. A summary of the discussion is presented here, with a focus on limitations of current knowledge, highlighting areas that appear to require further investigation in order to guide scientific practice while minimizing potential exposure or risk in the laboratory setting. The committee concluded that, based on all currently available data, although neurodegenerative disease-associated aggregates of several different non-prion proteins can be propagated from humans to experimental animals, there is currently insufficient evidence to suggest more th...

JAMA Psychiatry

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights longstanding health disparities in th... more The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights longstanding health disparities in the United States. African American individuals contract the disease at much higher rates than White individuals and are nearly twice as likely to die of it. Hispanic/Latinx people and American Indian and Alaska Native people are also overrepresented among confirmed cases. 1 Structural racism fosters vast inequalities among individuals of color, including economic disadvantage as a result of lowpaying jobs, discrimination in education and the workforce, underrepresentation in research, 2 and lack of access to adequate health care and healthy foods. These and other associated factors, including the higher prevalence of comorbid conditions, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, contribute to the greater morbidity and mortality associated with COVID-19 infection in Black, Latinx, and American Indian and Alaska Native populations. These inequalities begin before birth and affect an individual's development. Advances in research methods and data analytics now allow us to study their outcomes in the short term and long term. The Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study will be uniquely

Adversity and Resilience Science

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study will establish a large cohort of pregnant wo... more The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study will establish a large cohort of pregnant women from regions of the country significantly affected by the opioid crisis and follow them and their children for at least 10 years. Findings from this cohort will help researchers understand normative childhood brain development as well as the long-term impact of prenatal and postnatal opioid and other drug and environmental exposures. The study will collect data on pregnancy and fetal development; infant and early childhood structural and functional brain imaging; anthropometrics; medical history; family history; biospecimens; and social, emotional, and cognitive development. Knowledge gained from this research will be critical to help predict and prevent some of the known effects of prenatal and postnatal exposure to certain drugs or environmental exposures, including risk for future substance use, mental disorders, and other behavioral and developmental problems. In this special iss...

The Journal of Neuroscience

The BRAIN Initiative arose from a grand challenge to "accelerate the development and application ... more The BRAIN Initiative arose from a grand challenge to "accelerate the development and application of new technologies that will enable researchers to produce dynamic pictures of the brain that show how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits interact at the speed of thought." The BRAIN Initiative is a public-private effort focused on the development and use of powerful tools for acquiring fundamental insights about how information processing occurs in the central nervous system (CNS). As the Initiative enters its fifth year, NIH has supported Ͼ500 principal investigators, who have answered the Initiative's challenge via hundreds of publications describing novel tools, methods, and discoveries that address the Initiative's seven scientific priorities. We describe scientific advances produced by individual laboratories, multi-investigator teams, and entire consortia that, over the coming decades, will produce more comprehensive and dynamic maps of the brain, deepen our understanding of how circuit activity can produce a rich tapestry of behaviors, and lay the foundation for understanding how its circuitry is disrupted in brain disorders. Much more work remains to bring this vision to fruition, and the National Institutes of Health continues to look to the diverse scientific community, from mathematics, to physics, chemistry, engineering, neuroethics, and neuroscience, to ensure that the greatest scientific benefit arises from this unique research Initiative. Structure of the BRAIN Initiative Within NIH, the NIH BRAIN Initiative is managed by staff from the 10 Institutes and Centers (ICs) whose missions and current research portfolios complement the goals of the Initiative:

Brain, 2011

Neuroplasticity can be defined as the ability of the nervous system to respond to intrinsic or ex... more Neuroplasticity can be defined as the ability of the nervous system to respond to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, function and connections. Major advances in the understanding of neuroplasticity have to date yielded few established interventions. To advance the translation of neuroplasticity research towards clinical applications, the National Institutes of Health Blueprint for Neuroscience Research sponsored a workshop in 2009. Basic and clinical researchers in disciplines from central nervous system injury/stroke, mental/addictive disorders, paediatric/developmental disorders and neurodegeneration/ ageing identified cardinal examples of neuroplasticity, underlying mechanisms, therapeutic implications and common denominators. Promising therapies that may enhance training-induced cognitive and motor learning, such as brain stimulation and neuropharmacological interventions, were identified, along with questions of how best to use this body of information to reduce human disability. Improved understanding of adaptive mechanisms at every level, from molecules to synapses, to networks, to behaviour, can be gained from iterative collaborations between basic and clinical researchers. Lessons can be gleaned from studying fields related to plasticity, such as development, critical periods, learning and response to disease. Improved means of assessing neuroplasticity in humans, including biomarkers for predicting and monitoring treatment response, are needed. Neuroplasticity occurs with many variations, in many forms, and in many contexts. However, common themes in plasticity that emerge across diverse central nervous system conditions include experience dependence, time sensitivity and the importance of motivation and attention. Integration of information across disciplines should enhance opportunities for the translation of neuroplasticity and circuit retraining research into effective clinical therapies.

Biological Psychiatry, 2012

No abstract is available. To read the body of this article, please view the Full Text online. ...... more No abstract is available. To read the body of this article, please view the Full Text online. ... © 2012 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ... Visit SciVerse ScienceDirect to see if you have access via your institution. ... Advertisements on this site ...

Biological Psychiatry, 2013