Jan Wessel, assistant professor of neurology and of psychological and brain sciences, has been awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. The award is $750,000 over 5 years. The CAREER award is the most prestigious NSF honor for junior faculty and recognizes research and teaching excellence, as well as scholars who are likely to become future academic leaders.

Wessel’s research, titled. “Human motor inhibition: a neural race between motor emission and cognitive control,” will study how brain activity underlying motor emission (initiating an action) and motor inhibition (stopping that action) interact during the rapid stopping of action. Action-stopping is significantly impaired across many neuropsychiatric disorders.

Much of Wessel’s work is focused on how the brain communicates with the motor system to help the body stop an action. This communication is vital because it helps us avoid surprises and react to potentially dangerous or unforeseen circumstances. Earlier this year, a study out of his lab showed that when participants heard an unexpected sound, they stopped an action more often than when they heard no sound at all. The finding offered insight into how an external stimulus could speed up the brain’s communication with the motor system. This could help clinicians treat patients with motor-control disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and ADHD, as well as address the decline in motor control that accompanies aging.