Kimberly Nixon - Ph.D.

Dr. Nixon received her Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin under the mentorship of Dr. Steven W. Leslie, Dean of the College of Pharmacy and National Academies of Science member, Dr. Abram Amsel. Dr. Nixon then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Fulton T. Crews, Director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While at UNC, she was the first to discover the effect of alcohol on neurogenesis in adult organisms.

Selected Publications/Presentations

• Nixon, K. & Morris, S. A. (2007). Neural Stem Cells: A potential mechanism in alcoholic neurodegeneration and recovery. In L. Sher (Ed.) Research on the Neurobiology of Alcohol Use Disorders. Nova Science Publishers (New York). In press.
• Crews, F.T. Nixon, K. Kim, D., Qin, L., Shukitt-Hale, B., Josephs, J.A., & Zou, J-Y. (2006). BHT blocks NFkB activation and ethanol-induced brain damage. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 30, 1938-49.
• Nixon, K. (2006). Alcohol and adult neurogenesis: Roles in neurodegeneration and recovery from chronic alcoholism. Hippocampus, 16, 287-95.
• Crews, F.T., Mdzinarishvili, A., Kim, D.H., He, J., & Nixon, K. (2006). Alcohol inhibits neurogenesis in the adolescent rat. Neuroscience, 137, 437-445.
• Saito, T., Tabakoff, B., Hoffman, P.L., Nixon, K., Tateno, M., & Guerri, C. (2005). The effects of ethanol on neuronal and glial differentiation and development. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 29, 2070-2075.
• He, J., Nixon, K., Shetty, A.K., & Crews, F.T. (2005). Chronic alcohol exposure reduces hippocampal neurogenesis and alters dendritic morphology of newborn neurons. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21, 2711-2720.
• Nixon, K. & Crews, F.T. (2004). Temporally specific burst in cell proliferation increases hippocampal neurogenesis in protracted abstinence from alcohol. The Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 9714-9722.
• Nixon, K. & Crews, F.T. (2002). Binge alcohol exposure decreases neurogenesis in adult rat hippocampus. Journal of Neurochemistry, 83, 1087-1093.
• Nixon, K. Hughes, P., Amsel, A., & Leslie, S.W. (2002). NMDA receptor subunit expression following early postnatal exposure to ethanol. Developmental Brain Research, 139, 295-299.