Cohen Announces $148K for UTHSC

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN-9) today announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded the University of Tennessee Health Science Center $148,000 to study the role of the thalamus in taste processing. The new federal funds will be distributed by the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). NIDCD is mandated to conduct and support biomedical and behavioral research and research training in the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, smell, taste, voice, speech and language.

“The research conducted at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center helps improve health care in Tennessee and across the country,” said Congressman Cohen. “Millions of Americans suffer from communication impairments or disorders. These new federal funds will give doctors and scientists at UTHSC the tools they need to better understand communication disorders and advance their research.”

NIDCD is one component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The mission of NIDCD is to “address special biomedical and behavioral problems associated with people who have communication impairments or disorders; and to support efforts creating devices which substitute for lost and impaired sensory and communication function.”