Meaghan C. Creed

Meaghan Creed is a Canadian neuroscientist and associate professor of anesthesiology at Washington University School of Medicine. Creed has conducted research on understanding and optimizing deep brain stimulation in the basal ganglia for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Her work has been recognized at the national and international level by Pfizer, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Whitehall Foundation, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation.

Early life and education Creed grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, on the banks of Lake St. Clair. She attended the McNaughton Avenue Public School and became interested in biology as early as grade 2 when a scientist came into her classroom to talk about genetically engineered corn. Creed stayed with the University of Toronto for her graduate studies, but moved downtown to conduct research at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health under Jose N. Nobrega. She worked under Christian Lüscher, where she learned techniques such as optogenetics and electrophysiology in models of cocaine addiction. Her postdoctoral work used DBS to reduce synaptic plasticity in the mesolimbic reward circuitry in response to cocaine addiction. These findings suggested alternative functional neuroplastic changes as a cause of TD, so Creed decided to explore the possibility of alleviating TD with deep brain stimulation (DBS). Her findings showed that DBS might provide therapeutic relief to patients with drug-induced dyskinesias. Creeds explorations of how DBS impacts neural activity and neural circuitry established some of the first findings into the mechanisms of DBS as well as providing a model with which to further study them. These results suggest that divergent neuroanatomic mechanisms in the EPN and STN, upon DBS stimulation, lead to similar behavioral outcomes. Creed found that cocaine exposure drove insertion of GluN3A-containing NMDAR onto VTA dopamine neurons which impaired their excitability and prevented the activation of the SK channels. This finding was one of the first to show that DBS can be used like optogenetics to cause synaptic level and behavioral changes in mice, a finding that increases the translational potential of optogenetic studies. Creed's lab at the University of Maryland focused on probing the neural circuitry underlying reward-seeking, risk tolerance, impulsivity, and anhedonia in order to one day develop strategies to modulate these circuits in a therapeutic manner. The types of neuromodulatory therapies her lab focuses on are deep brain stimulation, targeted drug delivery, and neurostimulation. Creed and her team found that VP neurons have excitatory projections to lateral habenula, rostromedial tegmental nucleus, and GABAergic VTA neurons. They first explored human imaging studied to look at the role of the VP in the human brain and found that it tracks reward-sensitivity and motivation to seek rewards. They made the instructions, the code and the schematics all open source.

Awards and honors

2019 Rita Allen Foundation Scholar Award in Pain Daniel X. Freedman Prize, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation - Cellular adaptations underlying learned helplessness behavior

Select publications

Vachez YM*, Tooley JR*, Abiraman K, Matikainen-Ankney BA, Casey E, Earnest T, Ramos LM, Silberberg H, Godynyuk E, Uddin O, Marconi L, Le Pichon CE, Creed MC. Ventral arkypallidal neurons inhibit accumbal firing to promote reward consumption. Nat Neurosci. 2021 24:379–390. Fobbs WC, Bariselli S, Licholai JA, Miyazaki NL, Matikainen-Ankney BA, Creed MC, Kravitz AV. Continuous representations of speed by striatal medium spiny neurons. J Neurosci. 2020 Feb 19;40(8):1679-1688. Godynyuk E, Bluitt MN, Tooley JR, Kravitz AV, Creed MC. An open-source, automated, home-cage sipper device for monitoring liquid ingestive behavior in rodents. eNeuro. 2019. 10;6(5). Tooley J, Marconi L, Alipio JB, Matikainen-Ankney B, Georgiou P, Kravitz AV, Creed M. Glutamatergic ventral pallidal neurons modulate activity of the habenula - tegmental circuitry and constrain reward seeking. Biological Psychiatry. 2018. Creed M, Pascoli VP, Lüscher C. Refining deep brain stimulation to emulate optogenetic treatment of synaptic pathology. Science. 2015. 347(6222):659-64. Creed M, Ntamati R, Chandra R, Lobo MK, Lüshcer C. Convergence of rewarding and anhedonic effects of cocaine in the ventral pallidum. Neuron. 2016. 92(1): 214–226. Creed MC, Hamani C, Nobrega JN. Effects of repeated deep brain stimulation on depressive- and anxiety-like behavior in rats: comparing entopeduncular and subthalamic nuclei. Brain Stimulation. 2012. 6(4):506-14. Creed MC, Hamani C, Bridgeman A, Fletcher PJ, Nobrega JN. Contribution of decreased serotonin release to the antidyskinetic effects of deep brain stimulation in a rodent model of tardive dyskinesia: comparison of the subthalamic and entopeduncular nuclei. Journal of Neuroscience. 2012. 32(28)9874-81. Creed MC, Hamani C, Nobrega JN. Early gene mapping after deep brain stimulation in a rat model of tardive dyskinesia: comparison with transient local inactivation. European Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology. 2011. 22(7):506-517.