The following was adapted from a Butler Hospital news release. Butler Hospital is affiliated with Brown University.

Butler Hospital has been awarded a $12 million, five-year Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant for research that sheds light on neuropsychiatric disorders and their potential future health implications.

Neuropsychiatric illnesses, common conditions that arise from abnormal functioning of the brain, can greatly impair people’s ability to learn, work, and emotionally cope. This grant, from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, supports a group of interdisciplinary investigators to build a center of excellence in clinical-translational brain research: The COBRE Center for Neuromodulation (CCN) at Butler Hospital.

CCN’s goal is to address the pressing need for novel therapies to treat neuropsychiatric disorders, by understanding and testing methods to change the functioning of brain circuits underlying these illnesses.

“This grant establishes Butler Hospital and The COBRE Center for Neuromodulation as a national leader in this field of translational medicine, expanding both research and clinical application of non-invasive brain stimulation across disorders of brain and behavior,” said Benjamin Greenberg, who is the principal investigator on the grant and is affiliated with the Carney Institute for Brain Science. “It will unify an interdisciplinary community in clinical-translational research on neuropsychiatric illnesses such as impulsivity, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, all focused on ultimately helping patients by developing new treatments.”

The CCN will be co-directed by Greenberg and Linda Carpenter, a nationally recognized leader in brain stimulation therapies and research who is affiliated with the Carney Institute.

“This federal funding will also help boost the state's growing biomedical research and innovation capacity, helping to bolster mentorship, advance the careers of young researchers, and support numerous jobs in the biomedical research industry," said Senator Jack Reed, who is a member of the Appropriations Committee.

The first group of project leaders supported by CCN will focus on impulsive behavior, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Researchers will receive administration and logistical support, and they will have access to experienced, highly-skilled mentors as well as new research infrastructure to aid them in the design and analysis of experiments and the practical use of stimulation and neuroimaging methods.

This federal grant compliments a $12 million COBRE grant for Brown University's Center for Central Nervous System Function, which is part of the Carney Institute.