The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the highly prestigious NIH Director's Pioneer Award to Neurobiology's Nuo Li. The Pioneer Award will provide $700,000 in direct costs per year for up to five years to support Li's research.
Disorganization of orofacial rhythmic movements can endanger an organism's survival. For example, discoordination of swallowing and breathing leads to choking, which is the fourth leading cause of death among preschool children and the elderly, and the leading cause of death among infants. Li's research aims to shed light on why these life-threatening symptoms occur in many forms of neurological malfunction, by mapping and dissecting the brainstem circuits that control orofacial movements.