Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology

About Our Department

The Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology of the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center (UTHSC) is currently home to 25 active neuroscientists with primary appointments and another 26 with secondary appointments, all participating in the campus-wide Neuroscience Institute, which includes over 90 neuroscience faculty. These investigators focus on research on neurological and neurodegenerative disorders, motor control, excitable properties of neurons and synaptic function, sensory information processing, brain tumor biology, vision and retina, neurogenetics and neural development, and intracellular signaling in neurons. UTHSC is one of the world’s leading centers exploiting novel genomic approaches to explore brain development, CNS function and behavior, and psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases.

Our Facilities

Core facilities for neuroscience research include an ultrastructure facility, histology laboratory, confocal scanning microscope, image analysis laboratory, and a proteomics/mass spectrometry laboratory, which are staffed by specialists. There are centralized laboratories to make transgenic and knockout mice. Investigators are expert in all areas of modern neurobiology, including in vivo and in vitro recording, patch-clamp studies, tissue culture, immunocytochemical localization of neurotransmitters and peptides, in situ localization of mRNA, retrograde and anterograde axonal tracing, calcium imaging, computer-assisted reconstruction of neuronal morphology, DNA sequencing and microarray analysis, and genetic and QTL analysis.

Our Graduate Students

Graduate students in neuroscience receive broad training in an interdisciplinary environment, essential to modern neurobiological research. Students wishing to pursue graduate training in neurobiology enter the Neuroscience Track within the Integrated Biomedical Sciences Program.