ReSearching for the Common Good: Brett Foster

November 17, 2025

As an interdisciplinary academic institute, the Institute for Social Concerns leverages research to respond to the complex demands of justice and to serve the common good. This series, ReSearching for the Common Good, highlights some of the scholars in our community.

Brett Foster is a neuroscience and behavior major from New Milford, Connecticut. He spent the summer of 2024 in Lima, Peru, on a Social Concerns Summer Fellowship for which he received a 2024 Research for the Common Good Award from the Institute for Social Concerns. With the award funding, he conducted follow-up research in the summer of 2025. In addition to his involvement with the institute, Brett works with the Special Olympics of Notre Dame and the BRAIN Lab in the Department of Psychology. Brett’s research has been generously supported by the Matt Weyenberg Memorial Endowment for Excellence at the Institute for Social Concerns.

What research did you conduct for the Social Concerns Summer Fellowship?

Through my fellowship, I researched the mental health of mothers of children with disabilities in the San Juan de Lurigancho district of Lima, Peru. Through this research project, I learned about the various factors impacting mothers and ultimately determined that having a support system was essential to mothers’ well-being. While this conclusion was important in helping me learn how to properly support families facing disabilities and allowed me to work with community leaders to develop stronger support systems, I noticed that the roots of families’ hardship—their children’s disability—remained unchanged. This deepened my passion for working with children with disabilities.

What follow-up research did you conduct as a recipient of the Research for the Common Good Award?

The Research for the Common Good Award carried funding of up to $5,000 to conduct additional research on a question of the common good. With this funding, I decided to focus my research on addressing the neurological basis of the movement disabilities I encountered in Peru. To do this, I took an unpaid research assistant position at the Burke Neurological Institute, an affiliate of Weill Cornell Medicine, and studied the neural circuits that are implicated in movement. My work consisted of studying the behavior and movement of rodents undergoing optogenetic stimulation of various neural pathways in the brain. With this work, I was able to play a role in identifying the interactions of different brain regions that initiate complex movement. Ultimately, this work can be used to develop therapies for neurological disorders that hinder motion.

How do you see your research contributing to the common good?

My time in Peru was the most impactful two months of my life and helped me discover the direction I want to take my professional career. That experience along with my biomedical research completed last summer are what drives me toward a future as a physician equipped with the skills and knowledge to treat children facing disabilities, providing the support families might not find otherwise. Specifically, out of my research this past summer emerged the collaborative research product Glutamatergic Pedunculopontine Nucleus (PPN) Projections as Mediators of Locomotion, supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Grants. This research product contributes to the common good by helping to identify pathways in the brain and understand their roles in locomotion state and speed, thus contributing to and continuing my mission of treating disabilities by addressing the biological underpinnings of movement disorders.