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Butler Hospital receives U.S. grant for brain science research

Providence Journal - 3/28/2019

March 28-- Mar. 28--PROVIDENCE -- A sizable federal grant will allow Butler Hospital to establish a new center for the further study of obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, impulsivity and other conditions categorized as neuropsychiatric illnesses. The goal is using neuroscience to create new treatments and approaches.

The five-year, $12-million Center of Biomedical Research Excellence grant from the National Institutes of Health will create "key infrastructure and support a core group of interdisciplinary investigators to build a self-sustaining center of excellence in clinical-translational brain research," according to a media release from the hospital.

"The overall goal of the COBRE Center for Neuromodulation," the hospital said, "will be to address the pressing need for novel treatments for people struggling with neuropsychiatric disease, by understanding and testing methods to change the functioning of brain circuits underlying such illnesses."

The new center follows last year's awarding of a federal grant in the same amount to establish Brown University'sCenter for Central Nervous System Function, part of the school's Carney Institute for Brain Science.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the new center will "lead to research breakthroughs in mental and behavioral health." It also, he said, will "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 U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: "There is so much we still don't know about managing relatively common conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. With this federal funding, Butler Hospital will lead pioneering brain science research to help patients whose lives are deeply affected by these conditions."

The grant will make the new center and Butler, a Care New England hospital, "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 Dr. Benjamin Greenberg, director of the OCD Research Program at Butler Hospital, and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

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