Grant to help Franken Lab pursue a new research project.
Tom Franken, MD, PhD, has received a Young Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) to fund a new direction in his research on the neural mechanisms of perception.
“The brain is typically confronted with incomplete information,” said Franken, an assistant professor of neuroscience at WashU Medicine. “For example, objects in the world are often partially occluded or camouflaged, and we do not get direct visual information from those parts. Remarkably, the brain reconstructs a representation of reality by filling in the gaps, akin to augmented reality systems, so we perceive complete objects instead of isolated fragments. Our recent research has revealed how columnar modules in the brain assemble borders in visual scenes into object surfaces. In this project, we aim to understand how these modules construct the ‘augmented reality’ of perception.”
The Franken Lab will inactivate specific clusters of neural tissue by applying light-sensitive ion channels in an area of the brain called V4. This experiment promises to reveal how these circuits contribute to perception.
“This new project fits well into our overall goal of understanding how perceptual inference works,” Franken said. “Scholars as early as Alhazen, who lived 1,000 years ago, already realized that the brain needs to actively infer reality from the patterns of light captured by the eyes. We hope this new project will bring us closer to that goal.”
The work could help support the development of novel therapies and diagnostic tools for psychotic disorders, which are known to disrupt these perceptual computations.
The BBRF Young Investigator Grant provides support for promising young scientists to conduct neurobiological research involving serious brain and behavior disorders such as schizophrenia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders or child and adolescent mental illnesses.
Franken’s award from the BBRF follows a 2017 Young Investigator Grant from the foundation.
“My interest in the neural mechanisms of perception started during my medical training, where I first learned about these fascinating computations,” Franken said. “Perception seems to occur automatically and effortlessly, but the complexity of the underlying computations is truly daunting. Understanding this is not only of general scientific interest but has important clinical ramifications. Disorders such as schizophrenia and autism are characterized by altered perception. We hope a mechanistic understanding of these processes will eventually result in new diagnostic and therapeutic tools for these diseases.”
The BBRF is the nation’s top non-governmental funder of mental health research grants, with more than 5,600 scientists from over 605 institutions globally receiving grants worth $462 million since 1987.
2024 Young Investigator grantees were awarded $10.4 million for 150 new, two-year grants.
“BBRF Young Investigator grants fund groundbreaking research aimed at reducing suffering in people with mental illness,” said Judith M. Ford, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-chair of the Young Investigator Grant Selection Committee. “These early-career scientists are pushing the boundaries in basic and clinical research to establish new approaches to early prediction, prevention and intervention and to develop next-generation therapies that offer hope for those with brain and behavior illnesses.”
Applications for 2025 BBRF Young Investigator Grants are open until March 12.