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When all else fails, some patients trying to overcome alcoholism, severe depression or anxiety, and even cluster headaches, turn to psychedelic drugs. Clinical research has shown the use of psychedelics to treat these conditions can produce dramatically positive results.
In adult human brains, the hippocampus generates new neurons (adult-born neurons, or ABNs) throughout life, helping us maintain memories and regulate emotions. Scientists call this process “adult hippocampus neurogenesis.” In people with Alzheimer’s disease, this process is impaired, leading to reduced production of ABNs with poorer qualities.
Given that Alzheimer’s patients often develop both cognitive symptoms (such as memory loss) and non-cognitive symptoms (such as anxiety and depression) for which new neuron generation plays a critical role, one way to help Alzheimer’s patients achieve symptom relief could be to restore this function.
Published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, research from UNC School of Medicine scientists demonstrated that stimulating a brain region called the supramammillary nucleus effectively enhanced adult-born neurons in the otherwise impaired Alzheimer’s brains of mice.
After patterned stimulation of the supramammillary nucleus, Alzheimer’s brains developed more ABNs with improved qualities. Importantly, activation of these ABNs restored both cognitive and affective deficits in the mouse models.
“Ultimately, the hope is to develop first-in-class, highly targeted therapies to treat AD and related dementia,” said senior author Juan Song, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and Jeffrey Houpt Distinguished Investigator at the UNC School of Medicine.
Patricia Rosenmeyer was named the Seymour and Carol Levin Distinguished Term Professor in Jewish Studies and director of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies in fall 2022. Although her Ph.D. from Princeton University is in comparative literature, her new position is helping her explore a deeper understanding of Jewish history, culture and thought.
The Carolina Center for Jewish Studies celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2023. Rosenmeyer was quick to credit her predecessors, the late Jonathan M. Hess and Ruth von Bernuth, for creating such a solid foundation.
Recent events at the center have included topics as wide-ranging as Yiddish culture in Ukraine, Southern Jews and the Lost Cause, and Jewish perceptions of justice during and after the Holocaust. The center has hosted more than 200 events since its founding in 2003.
Rosenmeyer is particularly grateful for the fellowships and research grants for students that have been made possible through private support, including gifts made during the Campaign for Carolina.
Rosenmeyer’s professorship was established in 2010 by Seymour Levin ’48 and Carol Levin, providing her with support for directing the center.
“We really are keen on supporting the next generation of scholars, and they don’t have to be academic scholars,” said Rosenmeyer. “They can find a career that they love, and it doesn’t have to be teaching at the university level. But we want to give them the foundation and experience in Jewish studies that they can combine with whatever other interests they have.”
Rebecca Fry’s lab is one of the first to study the effects of prenatal exposure to toxic metals as it relates to the epigenome — she has shown how behaviors and the environment can cause changes that affect the way genes function.
“This method highlights a way that we can understand how chemicals can have very long lasting and even transgenerational impacts,” said Fry, the Carol Remmer Angle Distinguished Professor in Children’s Environmental Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. In other words, environmental hazards can change a gene activity and those changes can be passed to future generations.
Thankfully, Fry’s lab is focused on solutions. “One of the things I love about working at Gillings is having opportunities to translate our work to something meaningful to communities and populations,” Fry said. “And we do that from many different angles.”
One of Fry’s first environmental health studies was on the effects of arsenic exposure during pregnancy and how that influenced the health of the child. While that study was focused on arsenic exposure in Thailand, Fry learned quickly after coming to Chapel Hill that she wouldn’t have to go outside the state’s borders to continue her research on arsenic poisoning. She launched the Institute for Environmental Health Solutions and is using funds from the Angle Professorship and the UNC Superfund Research Program, which she directs, to work with North Carolina communities that have contaminated drinking water and provide them with cost-effective filters.
Building on that research and more than 20 years of data, she collaborated with colleagues across campus and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to launch NC ENVIROSCAN. The user-friendly, web-based tool integrates the state’s data on chemical exposures, social factors and various health outcomes to identify areas of environmental injustice, where chemical exposure is high and where communities likely don’t have the money they need to have their water tested or have filters in their homes for protection. Community members, policymakers, clinicians, government agencies — everyone has access to this tool at 
