Summary: Yang Dan, PhD, a professor of Neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2024 Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize for her research on brain circuits that control behavior, with a particular focus on the networks that regulate sleep. Her work, including the development of the Motor Theory of Sleep Control, has provided a new framework for understanding how the brain governs sleep-wake states.
Key Takeaways:
- Prize-Winning Research on Sleep and Behavior: Yang Dan’s research has advanced the understanding of how brain circuits regulate both sleep and behavior, offering insights into sleep-wake brain state regulation.
- Motor Theory of Sleep Control: Dan proposed the Motor Theory of Sleep Control, a new conceptual framework that helps explain the mechanisms behind how the brain manages sleep-wake states.
- Recognition in Neuroscience: The 2024 Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize, awarded at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum, honors Dan’s contributions to understanding complex brain functions at multiple levels.
Society for Neuroscience member Yang Dan, PhD, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of Neurobiology, University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2024 Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize for her research on elucidating the brain circuits that control behavior with a special emphasis on those neuronal networks that control sleep.
Her seminal work has led her to propose a Motor Theory of Sleep Control that has provided a new conceptual framework for understanding sleep-wake brain state regulation.
The prize, permanently endowed by the Schaller-Nikolich Foundation, was presented to Dan at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum 2024 in June.
Dan’s Background and Work
Dan has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Beckman Young Investigator Award (1998), a SfN Research Award for Innovation in Neuroscience (2009), and the Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience (2023). In 2018, she was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.
Across the span of her career, Dan’s research has informed the field’s understanding of complex brain function at levels of analysis ranging from molecules and network interactions, to elucidating the neuronal circuitry underlying complex cognitive processes.
Honoring Advances Understanding Executive Brain Functions
The prize, named after the German neuroscientist Peter H. Seeburg, a pioneer in molecular neurobiology, was founded to recognize outstanding advances in the understanding of executive brain functions and cognitive processes. While the ultimate goal is to understand how the brain works as a whole, Seeburg appreciated that complex questions often must be broken down in order to become accessible to experimental scrutiny, according to a release from the Society for Neuroscience.
The Peter Seeburg Integrative Neuroscience Prize recognizes those who continue his legacy by successfully embedding molecular and cellular events in a circuit and systems context to make significant advances in explaining cognitive and behavioral processes such as emotion, learning, memory, attention, and decision-making.
In even years, the prize is presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies Forum, and in odd years, the prize is presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. The recipient receives a $100,000 prize. Nominations for next year’s prize open in early spring.
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