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Autumn Ivy, MD, PhD awarded AMFDP fellowship
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Autumn Ivy, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Pediatrics, Child Neurology at UCI School of Medicine was recently awarded a 2020 Amos Medical Faculty Development Program (AMFDP) fellowship by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Given annually, the award works to increase the number of medical, dental, and nursing faculty from historically disadvantaged backgrounds.
The Ivy lab seeks to understand how exercise during early-life periods of brain development can influence its function long-term.
Using transgenic and biological mouse models, the team can identify early-life critical periods by which exercise can influence neuronal function and behavior. The lab is currently focused on characterizing specific learning- and plasticity-related genes and their epigenetic regulators that are significantly influenced by early-life exercise.
The hypothesis is that exercise engages developmentally-specific epigenetic mechanisms that can enable the functioning of learning and memory circuits in a lasting manner.
“The positive effects of exercise on learning and memory have been well characterized in the adult brain. We can even identify and target exercise’s neural mechanisms to stave off cognitive dysfunction in mouse models of age-related neurodegeneration," said Dr. Ivy, fellow at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at UCI. “The developing brain, however, has been understudied in exercise research; yet it is precisely during this time of neurodevelopment when an intervention as powerful as exercise can have the greatest impact on brain function."
Dr. Ivy’s project is titled, "Adolescent exercise following chronic early-life stress: Models, mechanisms, and translation."
“My goal for this work is to identify molecular and epigenetic mechanisms of both early-life adversity and exercise, reveal targetable epigenetic mechanisms to reduce the cognitive sequelae of early-life adversity, and ultimately inform the development of ‘exercise prescriptions’ for our pediatric neurology patients," said Ivy.
The Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, formerly the Minority Medical Faculty Development Program, was renamed in January 2004 in honor of Harold Amos, PhD, who was the first African-American to chair a department, now the Department of Microbiology and Medical Genetics, of the Harvard Medical School. Each year, four-year postdoctoral research awards are offered to physicians, dentists and nurses who commit to careers in academic medicine, and serve as role models for faculty and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. To learn more: http://www.amfdp.org/about.
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