Three University of Iowa neuroscientists have won 2025 Young Investigator Awards from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Kyle Flippo, assistant professor of internal medicine, and postdocs Alexandra Bova and Joshua Tatz received the two-year, $70,000 grants, which help promising young scientists launch careers in neuroscience and psychiatry, supporting either extended research fellowship training or starting a research lab as a junior faculty member. This is the second time Flippo has won this research award, which is rare. 

Flippo’s project, “Investigating a Novel Neuropeptide Circuit in the Amygdala Driving Fear Generalization,” investigates the neural mechanisms underlying maladaptive fear responses, which are central to numerous psychiatric disorders, including PTSD and anxiety disorders. Dysregulated fear generalization—where fear extends beyond actual threats to neutral stimuli—is a hallmark of PTSD and anxiety disorders, contributing to hypervigilance and avoidance behaviors. The project seeks to elucidate how gastrin-releasing peptide (Grp) signaling in a basolateral and central amygdala circuit facilitates excessive fear responses. This process that may also be relevant to psychiatric comorbidities observed in neurodevelopmental (e.g. autism spectrum disorder) and neurodegenerative (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease) conditions, where altered amygdala function has been implicated in anxiety and emotional dysregulation.

Bova is a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Kumar Narayanan, the Juanita J. Bartlett Professor of Neurology. Her project, “Dopaminergic Modulation of D1- and D2-MSNs During Executive Function” seeks to better understand how neurons expressing the D1 and D2 dopamine receptors in the striatum function. These receptors play a key role in cognitive functions which are impaired in schizophrenia, so understating the function is essential to design better therapies. Bova’s past work shows that striatal neurons expressing dopamine receptors are essential for how the brain estimates time, a process that is markedly abnormal in schizophrenia. This research will involve imaging dopamine release, manipulating dopamine neuron activity, recording from large populations of striatal neurons, and computational modeling.

Tatz is a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Nicholas Trapp, assistant professor of psychiatry. His project, “Investigating Low-Intensity Ultrasound as a Targeted Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Approach for Regulating Intrusive Thoughts: A Mechanistic Pilot Study in Humans,” is focused on low-intensity, focused ultrasound (FUS), an emerging non-invasive brain stimulation technique that can precisely target deep brain regions with longevity after stimulation. Tatz will examine negative thoughts as they occur in humans both spontaneously after viewing personally aversive images, and when neutral images prompt memory intrusions of associated aversive images despite attempted memory suppression. These will provide human models that could shed light on how negative thoughts occur in ruminative depression and PTSD. Negative thought patterns are a major source of emotional distress in many psychiatric conditions, ranging from negative rumination in depression to intrusive memories in PTSD. FUS may be an effective alternative to invasive deep brain stimulation.”

UI researchers have a strong track record with the Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. With one exception, UI trainees or faculty members have won this award each year since 2018.