The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) has named Meaghan Creed, PhD, assistant professor in anesthesiology, as the recipient of its 2021 Daniel X. Freedman Award. This annual award is given for outstanding achievements in basic research by a Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator and honors outstanding scientists working to advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness.
Dr. Creed – who is also an assistant professor at the Washington University Pain Center – was recognized for her research on how activity within basal ganglia subcircuits reflects hedonic value of reward, and how this circuit activity orchestrates reward consumption as a function of this hedonic value. Dr. Creed’s lab aims to understand pain- and opiate-induced plasticity within this and other defined basal ganglia circuits, and to leverage this insight to develop novel circuit-based therapies for disorders of reward processing.
Since its founding in 1987, BBRF has awarded more than $418 million to more than 5,000 scientists around the world. The Freedman Prize honors the late Daniel X. Freedman, MD, a pioneer in biological psychiatry and psychopharmacology and a founding member of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Scientific Council.
Read the official Brain & Behavior Research Foundation’s press release.