To support the next stage of their research, Rongsong Liu, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the Department of Zoology and Physiology, and Yun Li, an associate professor of neuroscience in the Department of Zoology and Physiology, have received a three-year grant of nearly $2.15 million from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health. The funding supports the second, expanded phase of their project, “Integrating Experimental and Computational Models to Study the Prefrontal Microcircuit Changes During Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease.” The new phase began July 1 and will continue through June 30, 2029, building on the successful milestones achieved during the project’s initial exploratory phase.

During the first phase, the researchers conducted a small set of calcium imaging experiments and developed mathematical and machine learning approaches to examine changes in prefrontal cortical microcircuits associated with aging and Alzheimer’s disease. The new funding will allow them to expand the number of experimental recordings, strengthen their computational analysis using larger datasets, and develop and validate mathematical models showing how neural connectivity changes over the course of normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease.

The study focuses on microcircuits in the prefrontal cortex, which are important for planning, reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving. Li’s laboratory will continue conducting longitudinal in vivo calcium imaging in freely behaving mice, tracking the activity of the same groups of neurons over weeks or months. Researchers will then use graph theory, machine learning and mathematical modeling to represent and analyze connections between neurons, with the goal of identifying network-level changes that may occur before noticeable behavioral or cognitive symptoms.

The project continues a collaboration with Rong Chen, an associate professor in the School of Medicine and associate vice chair of artificial intelligence at the University of Maryland. Li, Liu and Chen serve as co-principal investigators, with Li as the contact PI. Their complementary expertise combines neuroscience, experimental data, mathematical modeling, network analysis and neural decoding. The grant will also support UW graduate students in mathematics and neuroscience, giving them opportunities to work with neural calcium imaging data and develop quantitative and computational research skills. Researchers currently involved include Ph.D. students Navin Adhikari and Sishir Gautam, who are working on in vivo calcium imaging, and Mallory Lai, a mathematics postdoctoral fellow whose expertise is in machine learning.

Source: https://www.uwyo.edu/news/2026/08/uw-professors-receive-nih-grant-to-futher-study-brain-circuitry-changes-during-aging-alzheimers-disease.html