The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is a part of the U.S.
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...
(NIH). It conducts and funds research on
brain
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a ve ...
and
nervous system
In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes ...
disorders and has a budget of just over US$2.03 billion. The mission of NINDS is "to reduce the burden of neurological disease—a burden borne by every age group, every segment of society, and people all over the world".
NINDS has established two major branches for research: an extramural branch that funds studies outside the NIH, and an intramural branch that funds research inside the NIH. Most of NINDS' budget goes to fund extramural research. NINDS' basic science research focuses on studies of the fundamental biology of the brain and nervous system,
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
, neurodegeneration, learning and memory, motor control, brain repair, and
synapses. NINDS also funds clinical research related to diseases and disorders of the brain and nervous system, e.g.
AIDS,
Alzheimer's disease,
epilepsy
Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrica ...
,
muscular dystrophy,
multiple sclerosis,
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...
,
spinal cord
The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the sp ...
injury,
stroke, and
traumatic brain injury
A traumatic brain injury (TBI), also known as an intracranial injury, is an injury to the brain caused by an external force. TBI can be classified based on severity (ranging from mild traumatic brain injury TBI/concussionto severe traumatic br ...
.
Established in 1950 by the
U. S. Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washingt ...
as the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness to help handle the casualties of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, NINDS grew along with the NIH. During the 1950s and 1960s, NINDS and the NIH had strong Congressional support and received significant appropriations. However, this funding declined in 1968.
History
Impetus for creation
The NINDS was created in 1950 to study and treat the neurological and psychiatric casualties of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. Many service people had returned with serious brain injuries, nerve damage, and psychic trauma. According to one estimate, "neurologically disabled veterans in the postwar years accounted for about 25 percent of the patients in general hospitals and 10 percent of those in psychiatric hospitals".
[Rowland, 6.] In addition, 1.7 million American men had been rejected for military service due to a neuropsychiatric condition or learning disorder.
NINDS was also created as part of an effort to "revive the almost extinct neurological field".
[Farreras, 20.] At the time,
psychiatry
Psychiatry is the specialty (medicine), medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psych ...
and its focus on "emotional tensions due to interpersonal, social, and cultural maladjustments" held sway in US medicine, while neurology, with its focus on the inner workings of the brain, had fallen out of favor. During WWII, all of the administrative positions of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology held by the US armed services were filled by psychiatrists. After the war, a survey by the
Veteran's Administration
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is a Cabinet-level executive branch department of the federal government charged with providing life-long healthcare services to eligible military veterans at the 170 VA medical centers and ...
of the members of the
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Inc. (ABPN) is a not-for-profit corporation that was founded in 1934 following conferences of committees appointed by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Neurological Association, a ...
found that 48 were neurologists and 456 were psychiatrists.
In 1948,
Abe B. Baker, chair of neurology and psychiatry at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
, formed the
American Academy of Neurology
The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) is a professional society representing over 38,000 neurologists and neuroscientists. As a medical specialty society it was established in 1948 by A.B. Baker of the University of Minnesota to advance the ...
(AAN) to give young neurologists a national organization to join.
However, sustained research in neurology was not possible without a national institute. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, vocal
American Neurological Association
The American Neurological Association (ANA) is a professional society of academic neurologists and neuroscientists devoted to advancing the goals of academic neurology; to training and educating neurologists and other physicians in the neurologic ...
(ANA) members testified before Congress, arguing that there needed to be such an institute. They articulated the arguments which had already been made on a smaller scale by citizens' groups for diseases such as
multiple sclerosis,
cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sens ...
,
muscular dystrophy,
epilepsy
Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrica ...
, and
blindness
Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment, is a medical definition primarily measured based on an individual's better eye visual acuity; in the absence of treatment such as correctable eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment†...
.
Members of the research grants committee of the
National Institute of Mental Health
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is one of 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The NIH, in turn, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the prima ...
(NIMH), which had been founded in 1949, contend that they also helped provide an impetus for the new institute, as when reviewing grant applications they saw a significant number of neurological projects and proposed a separate institute for them.
Creation
![Mary Lasker](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Mary_Lasker.jpg)
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Blindness (NINDB), the original name for the NINDS, was officially established on November 22, 1950, three months after President
Harry Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
signed the
Omnibus Medical Research Act (Public Law 81-692) on August 15, 1950.
[Farreras, 21.] The legislation had been passed with the efforts of Senator
Claude Pepper
Claude Denson Pepper (September 8, 1900 – May 30, 1989) was an American politician of the Democratic Party, and a spokesman for left-liberalism and the elderly. He represented Florida in the United States Senate from 1936 to 1951, and the Mi ...
, who was responsible for helping the majority of the NIH institutes get their start, wealthy New York entrepreneur
Mary Lasker
Mary Woodard Lasker (November 30, 1900February 21, 1994) was an American health activist and philanthropist. She worked to raise funds for medical research and founded the Lasker Foundation.
Early life
Mary Woodard was born in Watertown, Wisconsi ...
, and
Fight for Sight founder
Mildred Weisenfeld
Mildred Mosler Weisenfeld (1921 – December 6, 1997) is the Brooklyn-born founder of national not-for-profit foundation the National Council to Combat Blindness in 1946, now known as Fight for Sight, an organization based in New York City that pr ...
, who had retinitis pigmentosa.
NINDB was not conceived of entirely coherently at the beginning. For example, blindness was added because some concerned citizens raised the issue with Lasker who, in turn asked Congressman
Andrew Biemiller to do so in Congress. He simply added it to the bill, being sympathetic with the cause since his mother was blind.
NINDB was "responsible for conducting and supporting research and training in the 200 neurological and sensory disorders that affected 20 million individuals in the United States and were 'the first cause of permanent crippling and the third cause of death.'"
Because the
etiology of the most common neurological diseases was poorly understood, NINDB undertook both clinical and basic research on the disorders themselves and on treatments; intramural research on the structure of the brain and the nervous system itself; and, finally, extramural research on the entire field of neurology and blindness.
[Farreras, 22.]
In the beginning, the NINDB had an Advisory Council made of six medical professional and lay people, all appointed by the
U. S. Surgeon General. They formulated the path taken by the institute and granted its funds.
The NINDB's first annual budget was US$1.23 million. This came from the existing NIH budget, as Congress had not appropriated any new funds for the institute when it was created.
Although the NINDB's budget was increased to $1.99 million in 1952, there was still no money for new research programs. Moreover, the institute had neither a clinic nor a lab. As Ingrid Farreras writes in her history, "The research conducted by the institute was still supported by the NIMH
ational Institute of Mental Healthand the institute's survival was unclear."
[Farreras, 24.]
The NINDB's first director, Pearce Bailey, was appointed on October 3, 1951, and came with experience from the Neuropsychiatry Division at
Philadelphia Naval Hospital.
He appointed a representative from the AAN to meet with citizens' groups and they met together to generate a unified set of demands. As a result, the National Committee for Research in Neurological Disorders (NCRND) was formed. The NCRND presented a coherent research proposal to Congress and in 1953 the NINDB received a separate line item budget of $4.5 million. The institute was now able to fund its research. However, until 1961, the NINDB and NIMH shared research facilities and scientists, often collaborating on projects.
1951–1968: Strong political alliances and adding stroke
![PearceBailey](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/PearceBailey.jpg)
Bailey established the extramural grants and field investigations into
retrolental fibroplasia
Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), also called retrolental fibroplasia (RLF) and Terry syndrome, is a disease of the eye affecting prematurely born babies generally having received neonatal intensive care, in which oxygen therapy is used due t ...
, geographic distribution of
multiple sclerosis, and projects related to
mental retardation
Intellectual disability (ID), also known as general learning disability in the United Kingdom and formerly mental retardation, Rosa's Law, Pub. L. 111-256124 Stat. 2643(2010). is a generalized neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by signifi ...
and
cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, stiff muscles, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be problems with sens ...
.
[Rowland, 46.] In 1955, then U.S. Senator
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
announced, to the organization
United Cerebral Palsy
United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) is an international nonprofit charitable organization consisting of a network of affiliates. UCP is a leading service provider and advocate for adults and children with disabilities. As one of the largest health nonpro ...
, that the institute was "planning to launch an all-out attack against the dread spectre of cerebral palsy". By 1959, a study to look at how gestation affected cerebral palsy had been started.
During the 1950s, Mary Lasker, Senator
Lister Hill
Joseph Lister Hill (December 29, 1894 – December 20, 1984) was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Alabama in the U.S. Congress for more than forty-five years, as both a U.S. Representative (1923–1938) ...
and Representative
John E. Fogarty ensured continued financial support for NINDB. Together, the two Congressmen held hearings to establish the NIH budget and lobbied hard for more funds. They were assisted by Lasker, who had extensive Washington connections and was aided by
Mike Gorman
Michael Gorman (born November 24, 1945) is an American television play-by-play commentator for the Boston Celtics on NBC Sports Boston. Gorman also did play-by-play, alongside Fran Fraschilla, for NBC for basketball games during the 2016 Summ ...
, a journalist and promoter of mental health. The new director of the NIH,
James Shannon, a politically astute man who also had an ability to pick talented scientists, helped solidify what became "the golden years of science at NIH". With Shannon, Fogarty, Hill, and Lasker working together, the NIH's budget as a whole increased more than tenfold between 1955 and 1965. This directly benefited NINDB, as its budget rose and fell along with general budget.
[Rowland, 33.]
Throughout the 1960s, under the directorship of Richard L. Masland, the NINDB sponsored the ground-breaking research of
Carleton Gajdusek and
Joseph Gibbs. Gajdusek eventually won a
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
for his work on ''
kuru
Kuru may refer to:
Anthropology and history
* Kuru (disease), a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy associated with the cannibalistic funeral practices of the Fore people
* Kuru (mythology), part of Meithei mythology
* Kuru Kingdom, ...
'' in
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
''.
'' The NINDB also set up clinical research centers at several universities as well as targeted research programs, such as the head injury program and the epilepsy initiative.
Stroke was added to the institute's mandate in the 1960s and in October 1968 the institute became the "National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke".
[ Lasker was prompted to address the disease when ]Joseph P. Kennedy
Joseph Patrick Kennedy (September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969) was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He is known for his own political prominence as well as that of his children and was the patriarch of the Irish-American Ken ...
, father of then-President John F. Kennedy had one. She convinced him that a stroke commission would be a good idea and they agreed that Michael E. DeBakey would be a good director. After Kennedy was assassinated, she approached President Lyndon Johnson, who established the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke in 1964 with DeBakey at its head. The commission produced a report that resulted in a bill being passed in 1965 that established centers for the diseases across the country. In his history of the NINDS, Rowland explains that "authorities later doubted that they had much lasting impact on stroke theory or therapy."[Rowland, 39.] This example, he notes, "illustrates the tension between advocates of basic research and those who wanted immediate application". Johnson and Lasker wanted to see people benefit right away while the director of the NIH, Shannon, and other scientists were more cautious about using knowledge they did not fully understand and skeptical of the "disease-of-the-month approach". They had a "bedrock belief in the importance of basic science".
The political alliance that between Shannon, Lasker, Fogarty, and Hill began to splinter at the end of the 1960s. In 1967 when he wrote a 20-year history of the NIH, Shannon did not mention Lasker's contributions. By 1968, Fogarty had died and Hill and Johnson had declined to run for reelection. With the election of Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
, the tone of research funding changed.[Rowland, 40.]
In general, according to Rowland, "there was a feeling that vision research was not being adequately at NINDB".[Rowland, 49.] In 1967, a bill to create a separate eye institute was drafted, and in August 1968, federal legislation created the National Eye Institute
The National Eye Institute (NEI) was established in 1968. It is located in Bethesda, Maryland, United States. The NEI is one of 27 institutes and centers of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the US Department of Health and ...
, to build an enlarged program based on the blindness research that had been conducted by NINDB.
1968–1980
Starting in the late 1960s, the budget of the NIH as a whole was reduced, which affected NINDS. Training programs were cut. President Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
's administration directed the institutes to work more aggressively on applied research and projects that would directly affect patients. Natalie Spingarn argues in her book about the politics of health research that the Nixon administration resisted scientists who did were not politically sympathetic to the president. Shannon has described the years between 1967 and 1970 as a time of "progressive constraints": the budgetary process was "chaotic", with "Presidential vetoes, overrides by Congress, proposed recission of funds allocated, acceptance or rejection of these recissions by Congress, impoundment of appropriations, and their later release by court action". In general, increases in the NIH budget during the 1970s and 1980s often did not exceed inflation. Edward F. MacNichol, who was director of NINDS between 1968 and 1973 described his tenure as the end of a "long period of NIH prosperity". Rowland writes that "these years of financial insecurity may have been the most difficult time in the history of NINDS". However, he notes the achievements they made as well. For example, King Engel and his team discovered that prednisone
Prednisone is a glucocorticoid medication mostly used to suppress the immune system and decrease inflammation in conditions such as asthma, COPD, and rheumatologic diseases. It is also used to treat high blood calcium due to cancer and ad ...
could effectively treat myasthenia gravis and acetazolamide
Acetazolamide, sold under the trade name Diamox among others, is a medication used to treat glaucoma, epilepsy, altitude sickness, periodic paralysis, idiopathic intracranial hypertension (raised brain pressure of unclear cause), urine alkal ...
was shown to prevent periodic paralysis.
In March 1975 the institute was again renamed, becoming the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke (NINCDS).
1980s
In November 1988, some of NINCDS's research was moved to the newly created National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and NINCDS was renamed the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, its current name.
1990s
During the 1990s, Senators Arlen Specter
Arlen Specter (February 12, 1930 – October 14, 2012) was an American lawyer, author and politician who served as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1981 to 2011. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican fr ...
and Tom Harkin
Thomas Richard Harkin (born November 19, 1939) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as a United States senator from Iowa from 1985 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously was the U.S. representative for Io ...
were responsible for pushing a large increase in the NIH budget as a whole. They doubled it in five years and subsequent years saw annual increases of 15 percent.
2000s
The NINDS budget passed $1 billion for the first time in fiscal 2000; the bulk of the budget is dedicated to extramural research and investigator-initiated grants (intramural research accounts for about 10 percent of the total).
Mission
The mission of the NINDS, as stated on their website, is "to reduce the burden of neurological disease—a burden borne by every age group, every segment of society, and people all over the world". The NINDS notes that there are over 600 such disorders, with some of the common being stroke, epilepsy
Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrica ...
, Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...
, and autism. In an effort to achieve their goal, the NINDS "supports and conducts research, both basic and clinical, on the normal and disease
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...
d nervous system, fosters the training of investigators in the basic and clinical neurosciences, and seeks better understanding, diagnosis
Diagnosis is the identification of the nature and cause of a certain phenomenon. Diagnosis is used in many different disciplines, with variations in the use of logic, analytics, and experience, to determine " cause and effect". In systems engin ...
, treatment, and prevention of neurological disorders."
Research
General
"Some important areas of NINDS basic research include: biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
of the cells of the nervous system, brain and nervous system development, genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
of the brain, cognition and behavior, neurodegeneration, brain plasticity and repair, neural signaling, learning and memory, motor control and integration, sensory function, and neural channels, synapses, and circuits."[
"Some key areas of NINDS clinical research include: neurological consequences of AIDS, ]Alzheimer disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As t ...
, brain tumor
A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...
s, developmental disorder
Developmental disorders comprise a group of psychiatric conditions originating in childhood that involve serious impairment in different areas. There are several ways of using this term. The most narrow concept is used in the category "Specific Di ...
s, epilepsy, motor neuron diseases, muscular dystrophies
Muscular dystrophies (MD) are a genetically and clinically heterogeneous group of rare neuromuscular diseases that cause progressive weakness and breakdown of skeletal muscles over time. The disorders differ as to which muscles are primarily affe ...
, multiple sclerosis, neurogenetic disorders, pain, Parkinson disease and other neurodegenerative disorder
A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Such neuronal damage may ultimately involve cell death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic ...
s, sleep disorder
A sleep disorder, or somnipathy, is a medical disorder of an individual's sleep patterns. Some sleep disorders are severe enough to interfere with normal physical, mental, social and emotional functioning. Polysomnography and actigraphy are tests ...
s, spinal cord
The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the sp ...
injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury
A traumatic brain injury (TBI), also known as an intracranial injury, is an injury to the brain caused by an external force. TBI can be classified based on severity (ranging from mild traumatic brain injury TBI/concussionto severe traumatic br ...
."[
"Most NINDS-funded research is conducted by extramural scientists in public and private institutions, such as ]universities
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...
, medical schools, and hospitals
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...
. NINDS intramural scientists, working in the Institute's laboratories, branches, and clinics, also conduct research in most of the major areas of neuroscience and on many of the most important and challenging neurological disorders. The Institute's interests, however, are not limited to NINDS programs. The Institute collaborates with other NIH components, as well as with other federal agencies, and with voluntary, professional and commercial organizations."[
]
Specific
Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award
The ''Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award'' (R37) was established in October 1983 to honor the late U. S. Senator Jacob K. Javits, "a strong advocate for support of research in a wide variety of disorders of the brain and nervous system" who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Douglas G. Stuart was an early awardee among the over 600 of these up-to-seven-year awards granted from 1984 to date
Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship
The ''Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship'' is named after former NINDS Director Dr. Story Landis.
Structure
Director
Walter J. Koroshetz, M.D. was selected director of NINDS on June 11, 2015. He began working at NINDS in 2007 as deputy director, and he served as acting director from October 2014 through June 2015.
Koroshetz received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and his medical degree from the University of Chicago. He trained in neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), after which he did post-doctoral studies in cellular neurophysiology at MGH and at Harvard Medical School, studying mechanisms of excitoxicity and neuroprotection. Before joining NINDS, Koroshetz served as Vice Chair of the neurology service and Director of stroke and neurointensive care services at MGH. He was a professor of neurology at Harvard and led neurology resident training at MGH between 1990 and 2007.
Koroshetz has been granted many honors in his distinguished career and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association.
Division of Extramural Research
The Division of Extramural Research funds programs outside of the NIH which "support research, research training, and career development". The Division itself is broken down into "program clusters" that are "organized around critical, cross-cutting scientific topics that hold great promise for advancing knowledge and reducing the burden of neurological disease".[ They are: Repair and Plasticity; Systems and Cognitive Neuroscience; Channels, Synapses, and Circuits; Neurogenetics; Neural Environment; and Neurodegeneration. Other working groups include: the Clinical Trials group, the Office of Minority Health and Research, the Technology Development group; and the Office of International Activities, and the Office of Training and Career Development. Within these areas, the Division tracks research and development and determines the necessity and areas for further research, analyzing and reporting on its findings to the NIH and the nation. It pursues research with other NIH institutes. Finally, it consults with and outside scientists, health organizations, and medical associational to help identify research needs and develops necessary programs to meet them.][
]
Division of Intramural Research
The Division of Intramural Research is "one of the largest neuroscience research centers in the world". Scientists here do research in the "basic, translational, and clinical neurosciences", covering a wide range of topics, including "molecular biophysics, synapses and circuits, neuronal development, integrative neuroscience, brain imaging and neurological disorders".[
]
List of directors
*
Notes
References
* Farreras, Ingrid G. "Establishment of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness." ''Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior: Foundations of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research at the National Institutes of Health''. Eds. Ingrid G. Farreras, Caroline Hannaway, and Victoria A. Harden. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2004. .
* Rowland, Lewis P. ''NINDS at 50: an incomplete history celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke''. New York: Demos Medical Pub, 2003.
External links
Official website
NINDS
account on USAspending.gov ttp://www.usaspending.gov USASpending.govis a database of spending by the United States federal government.
History
Around the time of the Act's passage, OMB Watch, a government watchdog group, was developing a site that would do essentially eve ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:National Institute Of Neurological Disorders And Stroke
Medical research institutes in Maryland
Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Neuroscience research centers in the United States
Government agencies established in 1950
Stroke organizations