Biography:

Dr. Rebecca Cunningham began her appointment as the 18th President of the University of Minnesota System on July 1, 2024.

As President, Dr. Cunningham is committed to working closely with the U of M community and Minnesotans broadly to shape a strong vision for the five-campus system and execute innovative strategies that achieve excellence in fulfilling the University’s three-part, land-grant mission of teaching, research, and outreach. President Cunningham also has a faculty appointment in the School of Public Health's Division of Epidemiology & Community Health.

Dr. Cunningham most recently served as the Vice President for Research and Innovation at the University of Michigan, where she was responsible for fostering excellence and upholding the institution’s public mission in research, scholarship, and creative practice across three campuses and a health system.

During her leadership tenure, the University of Michigan expanded its annual research portfolio to a record $1.86 billion. Dr. Cunningham also led the design and implementation of the first comprehensive review of the University of Michigan’s research, scholarship, and creative practice enterprise—a collaborative strategy aimed to bolster discovery and impact, accelerate knowledge translation, support entrepreneurial activity, expand statewide economic development, advance undergraduate student success, and strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Dr. Cunningham joined the University of Michigan in 1999 as an emergency medicine physician, with faculty appointments in the Medical School and the School of Public Health. Over the course of her career, her research has focused on public health, injury, and violence prevention, with scientific collaborations that span in engineering, communications, transportation, and public policy. In 2019, Dr. Cunningham was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and in 2023, Crain’s Detroit Business recognized Dr. Cunningham as a “Notable Leader in Higher Education”.

Dr. Cunningham holds a bachelor’s degree from Fairfield University and a medical doctorate from Jefferson Medical College. She completed her residency in emergency medicine at the University of Michigan Health System and a postdoctoral research fellowship with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Biography:

Dr. Francesca Filbey is a Professor of Cognition and Neuroscience and Bert Moore Chair at the Department of Psychology, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She is also Senior Associate Provost of Faculty Success and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Department of Psychiatry. 

She directs the NeuroImaging and Reward Dynamics Lab at the Center for BrainHealth where she examines biobehavioral mechanisms related to reward system dysfunction towards the goal of enhancing early detection and intervention. She incorporates translational approaches from the fields of cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, genetics, neuropharmacology, psychology, and psychiatry. Current projects involve the determination of these effects using neuroimaging tools (MRI, EEG), neuromodulation (rtMS, taVNS), genetics and computational modeling following exposure to cannabinoids. She is the author of The Neuroscience of Addiction. Dr. Filbey is a Board Member for the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and Associate Member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Presentation Title: 

Neural Circuit Alterations in Cannabis Use Disorder

Abstract:

As the landscape of cannabis use undergoes rapid transformations in the U.S. and worldwide, this presentation delves into our current understanding of how cannabis affects the brain. During this talk, I will synthesize data from various neuroimaging techniques, such as MRI and EEG, that will highlight the impact of cannabis on different brain regions, neurotransmitter systems, and cognitive functions. The talk will describe neuroimaging studies in long-term, heavy cannabis users that address: (1) the contemporary methods employed to investigate the effects of cannabis on the brain, (2) disparities in brain structure and function observed between cannabis users and non-users, and (3) the existing challenges in scientific research on cannabis. The comprehensive insights gained from these studies contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the neurological consequences of cannabis use, offering valuable implications for public health, policy, and potential therapeutic interventions.

Biography:

Dr. Mark Thomas is a professor of neuroscience and director of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction, a new research program funded by the state legislature to fuel cross-disciplinary collaborations and discover new treatment options. He is also the Director for the Center for Neural Circuits in Addiction. His research examines how addictive drugs alter the brain and how these changes can lead to compulsive drug use. His lab is now focusing on ways to disrupt addiction relapse. He conducts optogenetic techniques in the field of addiction as a neuromodulation researcher for MnDRIVE Brain Conditions research core.

Neurobiology of drug-induced plasticity and addiction: A fundamental question in neuroscience is how the structure and function of the brain is modified by experience. One compelling model of experience-dependent plasticity is behavioral sensitization—a long-lasting increase in the locomotor stimulatory effects of drugs of abuse following repeated exposure. Behavioral sensitization is also a prominent model for the intensification of drug craving that occurs in human addicts. My laboratory seeks to identify the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie this form of plasticity, as well as the genetic factors that may predispose an individual to sensitization. We are currently studying two cellular correlates of drug-induced plasticity, long-term depression at glutamatergic synapses in the nucleus accumbens—a key site of action of drugs of abuse in the brain—and the increases in the length of dendrites and the density of dendritic spines that also occur in accumbens neurons. We are using several complementary approaches to determine the relationship that each of these correlates has with behavioral sensitization and with each other: behavioral studies to determine the consequences of drug exposure, the use of transgenic and knockout mice, analysis of dendritic morphology via several staining methods and whole-cell recordings in brain slices to investigate synaptic function. These studies will provide insight into the cellular and molecular mechanisms of an important form of experience-dependent plasticity that may hold some of the clues to drug addiction.

Biography: 

Dr. Marina Wolf is Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University. She was among the first to study the role of neuronal plasticity in drug addiction. Her lab presently uses a combination of molecular, electrophysiological, and behavioral approaches to study synaptic plasticity and its functional significance in rat models of psychostimulant and opioid addiction. The overarching goal is to understand synaptic mechanisms in the nucleus accumbens and related circuits that maintain drug craving, and thus vulnerability to relapse, even after long periods of abstinence. Dr. Wolf received her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Yale and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Cell Biology, Sinai Hospital of Detroit. She was Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Wayne State University before moving to the Chicago Medical School in 1992 where she rose through the ranks, serving as Chair of Neuroscience from 2003-2018. She moved to OHSU in 2018.  Her lab has been continuously supported by NIDA since 1992, with past awards including an R37 (Merit Award). Dr. Wolf was elected Fellow of the AAAS in 2017. She served as President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in 2019 and was the 2022 recipient of the Julius Axelrod Prize from the Society for Neuroscience. Dr. Wolf founded a company in 2021 to develop therapeutics to facilitate abstinence in persons recovering from stimulant use disorder.

Presentation Title: 

Incubation of cocaine craving: A homeostatic plasticity hypothesis

Abstract:

Incubation of cocaine craving, a translationally relevant model for the persistence of drug craving during abstinence, ultimately depends on strengthening of nucleus accumbens core (NAcc) synapses through synaptic insertion of homomeric GluA1 Ca2+-permeable AMPA receptors (CP-AMPARs). My talk will focus on our recent work testing the hypothesis that CP-AMPAR upregulation results from a form of homeostatic plasticity, previously characterized in vitro and in other brain regions, that depends on retinoic acid (RA) signaling in dendrites. Under normal conditions, ongoing synaptic transmission maintains intracellular Ca2+ at levels sufficient to suppress RA synthesis. Prolonged blockade of neuronal activity results in disinhibition of RA synthesis, leading to increased GluA1 translation and synaptic insertion of homomeric GluA1 CP-AMPARs. Using slice recordings, we found that increasing RA signaling in NAcc medium spiny neurons (MSN) from drug-naïve rats rapidly upregulates CP-AMPARs, and that this pathway is operative only in MSN expressing the D1 dopamine receptor. In MSN recorded from rats that have undergone incubation of craving, this effect of RA is occluded; instead, interruption of RA signaling in the slice normalizes the incubation-associated elevation of synaptic CP-AMPARs. Paralleling this in vitro finding, interruption of RA signaling in the NAcc of ‘incubated rats’ normalizes the incubation-associated elevation of cue-induced cocaine seeking. These results suggest that RA signaling becomes tonically active in the NAcc during cocaine withdrawal and, by maintaining elevated CP-AMPAR levels, contributes to the incubation of cocaine craving.