Feature Story | 18-Jul-2025

$1.3 million grant to Brown to expand research on the role of blood-brain barrier in decision making

Researchers from Brown’s Carney Institute will investigate how the blood-brain barrier is involved in transmitting information to the brain, informing potential treatments for brain diseases and disorders.

Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A $1.3 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to Brown University will fund research on how brain blood vessels relay real-time signals across the blood-brain barrier directly to the brain.

The research, which aims to shed light on the potential role of the blood-brain barrier in decision making, may provide valuable insights into treating brain diseases and disorders and reveal ways that the protective barrier is more dynamic than currently understood. 

Led by Professor of Brain Science Christopher Moore, associate director of the Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University, the research team has found that blood vessels send signals through “plume events” that allow flashes of permeability across the otherwise highly restrictive barrier, which blocks toxins and harmful molecules from entering the brain.

“These moments when the blood-brain barrier opens allow the blood vessels to send signals where they are needed, and only when the risk is worth the reward,” Moore said.

The new grant-funded research will build on emerging knowledge that cell types beyond neurons — including endothelial cells that line blood vessels — contribute to brain function.

“Mammalian brains evolved to make complex choices,” Moore said. “The blood carries a rich range of signals from the body, so it makes sense that your brain might sample this information during moments of learning and choice in order to make those computations.” 

Prior to the team’s research, it was unclear how the blood-brain barrier — thought to be mostly restrictive and only capable of slow, delayed transmissions — could relay signals in real time for decision making. According to Moore, plume events resolve this paradox.

The researchers previously observed plume events in the cerebral cortex, a region key to perception, language and sensory processing. The goal of the new project is to determine if plume events occur in other brain areas and what types of information they transmit, including the possibility that they provide precisely delivered nutrition or waste-clearing to active brain regions. In addition, the researchers will investigate the possible role of the gut microbiome and immune system in regulating the flashes of blood-brain barrier penetrability.

Understanding the mechanisms of plume events could provide important insights on natural windows of opportunity to deliver therapeutic drugs to targets in the brain, a challenge that has made it difficult to treat brain diseases and disorders, according to Moore.

“One implication of our work is that there are ways to open the blood-brain barrier selectively, timed to exactly when drug delivery is needed,” Moore said. 

Plume events could lead to new biomarkers and targets for treating illnesses such as depression and Alzheimer’s disease, both diseases that are associated with an altered blood-brain barrier.

“This new understanding not only suggests a direct role for the blood-brain barrier in bringing information to the brain that can help decision making, but it could also reveal new pathways for getting past the blood-brain barrier and new ways of understanding when it fails,” Moore said.

Scientists from the Carney Institute for Brain Science and affiliated departments at the University will contribute to the research, including from the Department of Neuroscience, the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences and the School of Engineering.

The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, the founder of the Superior Oil Company. The foundation supports science, engineering and medical research, as well as undergraduate education, and maintains a program within Southern California to support arts and culture, education, health and community service projects.

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