Corina Bondi (’03), Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) and Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, was awarded a five year, $1.4 million grant entitled “Traumatic brain injury and aging: targeting the cholinergic system for deficits in sustained attention and executive function” from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bondi holds a BS in Neuroscience and Physics from Muskingum University (2003), where she was proud recipient of a John Glenn scholarship, and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology/Neuroscience from the University of Texas Health at San Antonio (2008), mentored by Muskingum alumnus, David Morilak (’82), Ph.D. She undertook a postdoctoral position in Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, followed by a second postdoctoral position at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research (SCRR). She transitioned to faculty in PM&R in 2015 and became an Associate Director in Executive Function and Neuropharmacology at the SCRR in 2017.  

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) affect 2.8 million individuals each year in the United States and often cause long-lasting cognitive and mood alterations, with the greatest external cause for TBI being falls, especially in older adults over 65 years of age. Therefore, the project aims to characterize alterations in sustained attention, behavioral flexibility, and anxiety-like responses after TBI in young adult and aged, male and female rats, and to address mechanistic questions regarding altered cholinergic neurotransmission responsible for such behavioral impairments by restoring behavioral performance and cholinergic signaling with NS 1738 - a positive allosteric modulator of alpha-7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptors – alone or in a combination with enriched environment, a preclinical model of neurorehabilitation.