New frontiers in neuroscience: 10 years of progress at UTSW’s O’Donnell Brain Institute
DALLAS – Oct. 30, 2025 – In her new office at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Ceci Verbaarschot, Ph.D., sits among unpacked boxes and discusses the intricacies of a brain-computer interface she is developing. The device is designed to restore sensation and movement in the upper limbs of people who are paralyzed from the neck down.
Dr. Verbaarschot, Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery and Biomedical Engineering, came to Dallas and UT Southwestern’s Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute (OBI) in the summer of 2025 to continue her next-level neuromodulation research because “all the pieces of the puzzle are here – the science, the technology, and the expertise,” she said. “And by working with various patient groups, we can make the biggest impact.”
Nearby at the OBI’s Center for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases (CAND), Marc Diamond, M.D., is taking aim at tau, the protein that underlies the formation of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. His lab’s acclaimed research is moving ever closer to earlier detection and treatments.
“The optimism within our field after decades of no real progress with clinical therapies is unbelievable,” said Dr. Diamond, Director of CAND and Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience. “In the world we have created within our Center, we are finding evidence of the disease at a biochemical level before there’s any cognitive impairment.”
That palpable sense of hope and purpose carries over to the clinical setting at OBI, where multidisciplinary teams are making significant gains in the treatment of epilepsy and essential tremor, depression, and schizophrenia – even intractable brain and spinal tumors.
Founded in 2015 through a visionary gift from Edith and Peter O’Donnell Jr. and sustained by a $1 billion “Campaign for the Brain,” OBI combines the best of both the research and clinical care worlds, creating a blueprint for how ingenuity, big ideas and investments, and, yes, brain power, can accelerate the future of neuroscience.
“The O’Donnell Brain Institute was envisioned as a place where we could forge new frontiers and offer our patients therapies that just a few years ago might have seemed out of reach,” said William T. Dauer, M.D., the inaugural Director of OBI and a renowned neurologist and neuroscientist. “United by our shared mission to overcome brain disease, every scientist, clinician, staff member, and administrator plays an essential role in bringing that vision closer to reality.”
With more than 300,000 patients treated annually and $140 million in research expenditures, OBI has a commitment to excellence in patient care and discovery that is unmatched in Texas.
As the state’s population ages and voters are being asked to consider allocating $3 billion in funding for a proposed Dementia Prevention Research Institute of Texas (DPRIT) to combat the growing rates of dementia – some estimates show a rise to more than 500,000 cases in Texas by 2030 – OBI is positioned to lead the way in making transformative and tangible advances related to every aspect of the brain. Here are just some of the many clinical, research, and technological innovations in progress at OBI, creating great promise for the future.
10 years and 10 areas of scientific innovation
