OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — At Boys Town National Research Hospital, an innovative institute is making way for innovative research. Tony Wilson leads the team and said the goal is to understand how the brain changes as children maturate into adults.
A research team at the institute is planning to study how conditions like depression or anxiety disorders alter the brain as people age.
"What we're hoping to do here is basically create maps and create data where we can start to identify those who are going to express these conditions years and years before they actually express them, so that way we can intervene, in many cases, years before we would be able to," Wilson said.
The team is comprised of almost 50 research scientists and staff.
Wilson called the field of neuroscience "the last frontier." While his team understands basic knowledge about brain function and the way it operates, there is still a lot to be discovered. Boys Town will discover it by "boldly going where no research has gone before."
"We're not yet been able to harness that information to better treat patients, that's really what we're hoping, now we can take that knowledge to a new level," Wilson said.
The institute will eventually house 9-10 different labs and between 100 to 120 researchers.
