Destination Area: Adaptive Brain and Behavior (ABB)

This destination area focuses broadly on how brains change and adapt over the life course, how they change following traumatic events or diseases, and how social and societal forces are affected by and affect brains and individuals. ABB brings together humanities, social sciences, and neuroscience to analyze adaptive changes across multiple levels of inquiry from molecules to individuals, families, and communities. This destination area has three organizational sub-themes: • Healthy and Unhealthy Brain Development: Characterizing healthy brain development first – including cognition, stress, emotion, and decision-making – allows researchers to better identify and understand unhealthy brain development with wide-ranging complex and interactive effects for people and communities. Virginia Tech has recognized leaders in research on focused brain and behavioral development. • Brain Trauma: Damage occurs to the brain not only due to injury, but also genetics or psychological/emotional causes such as PTSD, abuse, or neglect. Virginia Tech is a recognized leader for research and education to help recognize, respond to, and recover from brain trauma. • Brain Cancer: Affecting more than 200,000 people each year in the U.S. alone, brain cancer is a major health crisis. Virginia Tech has a strong contingent of internationally recognized investigators whose research is informing society on cancer biology, etiology, disease mechanisms, and experimental treatments. [http://provost.vt.edu/destination-areas/da-brain.htm]