David Sweatt

Background

About David Sweatt

I have had a career-long interest in biochemical mechanisms of learning and memory. In addition, my research program also investigates mechanisms of learning and memory disorders, such as intellectual disabilities, Alzheimer's Disease, and aging-related memory dysfunction. The laboratory uses knockout and transgenic mice to investigate signal transduction mechanisms in the hippocampus, a brain region known to be critical for higher-order memory formation in animals and humans. The laboratory has discovered a number of new roles and mechanisms of gene regulation in memory formation, focusing on studies of transcription factors, regulators of chromatin structure, and other epigenetic mechanisms such as chemical modification of DNA. Overall my work seeks to understand the role of regulation of gene expression in synaptic plasticity and long-term memory formation and storage. As part of the Department of Pharmacology, my laboratory also is interested in using what we have learned about the molecular basis of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and memory formation to generate insights into human pathological conditions associated with aging-related memory dysfunction. In summary, for the past 25 years I have focused my efforts on studies of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and behavioral learning and memory in the intact animal, using a multidisciplinary approach combining molecular biology, biochemistry, electrophysiology, and animal behavior. I am currently Professor and Bass endowed Chair in the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University Medical School, and most recently have expanded my research program to include developing PharmacoEpigenetic approaches to enable new treatments for cognitive dysfunction. At Vanderbilt, I also have faculty appointments in the Departments of Psychology and Molecular Physiology & Biophysics.