About

LSU MIND is the Multidisciplinary Initiative for Neuroscience Discovery at Louisiana State University.

The field of neuroscience addresses fundamental questions about the organization and function of the nervous system, as well as changes that occur as a result of development, experience, injury, and disease. Increasing our understanding of such phenomena poises us to recognize and promote adaptive patterns in behavior and neurological function, to the benefit of our local community and the greater population. Our mission is to coordinate and strengthen research, training, and community outreach opportunities related to neuroscience at LSU.

Our faculty have particular expertise in the following focus areas:

1. neuroscience of healthy and disordered communication
   
2. cognitive neuroscience in healthy and disordered populations
3. the neuroscience of movement in healthy and disordered populations

These three pillars of MIND research— cognition, communication, and movement— position us to take a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to enriching individuals and communities through basic and translational research. We often tackle the same problem or question through each of these lenses simultaneously. For example, one issue that is important for any community is to produce lifelong learners with the ability and motivation to adapt to changes in technology and take advantage of personal and economic enrichment opportunities as they arise. MIND researchers examine: 1) the neuroscience behind learning, memory and plasticity, including changes in older adulthood and in clinical populations; 2) language and literacy, and how communication abilities can impact learning; and 3) how changes to motor systems can affect older adults' ability to interact with the world and with information.

We are also uniquely positioned to advance understanding and treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders, which are often labeled as affecting only one area of function (e.g., "movement disorder", "language disorder", "thought disorder"), but in actuality have more complex causes and consequences. For example, although Alzheimer's disease is most known for affecting memory, changes in mood and personality can precede memory changes by years and research is only beginning to uncover how this is related to brain functioning. Schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer's disease and other brain disorders are among the 10 most costly medical conditions in the world, in part, because people can't work and are dependent on the public for their care. Movement, language, thought and many other systems are affected, but understanding them in isolation has not yielded any meaningful assessments, treatments or cures. Understanding them as interconnected systems is clearly necessary for the future, something that US and world agencies are putting top priority on through various brain initiatives.