Lillian Brady, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology, was recently named as one of 10 neuroscientists to receive the 2026 McKnight Scholar Award. The highly competitive award program supports early-career scientists who are building independent research programs and have shown a commitment to advancing neuroscience.
“Receiving the McKnight Scholar Award is both an honor and an affirmation of my research ideas focused on studying the biological factors that contribute to addiction,” said Brady. “I hope our work will not only advance neuroscience but also lay the foundation for more precise, personalized strategies to prevent and treat substance use disorders.”
Along with this honor, Brady will receive $75,000 per year for three years to support her project, “Sex-specific tuning of cholinergic and dopaminergic integration in context-reward circuits.” The study dives into a critical gap in understanding why substance use disorders affect men and women differently. She has identified sex-specific differences in how nicotinic acetylcholine receptors regulate dopamine release, a hormone-influenced mechanism that directly influences reward, motivation, and addiction vulnerability.
Building on this, Brady examines how ovarian hormones influence communication between brain circuits involved in reward and context-dependent behavior, particularly interactions between the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens. Using advanced physiological, neuromodulatory, and behavioral approaches, her work will define how these circuits influence dopamine signaling and behavior. This research aims to clarify how sex and hormones alter brain function, deepening understanding of addiction risk and supporting the development of more precise, personalized treatments for substance use disorders.
Brady, who earned her Ph.D. from the UAB Department of Neurobiology, joined the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology in 2023 to launch her independent lab. Her research focuses on uncovering how biological sex and hormones shape the brain’s response to drugs, with an emphasis on neural circuits that drive reward and motivated behavior. Using a multidisciplinary neuroscience approach, she investigates how local and long-range circuit interactions—and environmental cues such as context and experience—interact to influence addiction-related behaviors.