News

Hillel Adesnik Named Pew Scholar

June 17th, 2013

Twenty-two of the nation’s most enterprising researchers were named Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences by The Pew Charitable Trusts today. One of which was Hillel Adesnik, Ph.D.

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Humans Get the Gist of Complex Sounds

June 12th, 2013

New research by neuroscientists at UC Berkeley, suggests that the human brain is not detail-oriented, but opts for the big picture when it comes to hearing.
Researchers found that when faced with many different sounds, such as notes in a violin melody, the brain doesn’t bother processing every individual pitch, but instead quickly summarizes them to get an overall gist of what is being heard.

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Researchers Develop Easy and Effective Therapy to Restore Sight

June 12th, 2013

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed an easier and more effective method for inserting genes into eye cells that could greatly expand gene therapy to help restore sight to patients with blinding diseases ranging from inherited defects like retinitis pigmentosa to degenerative illnesses of old age, such as macular degeneration.
Unlike current treatments, the new procedure is quick and surgically non-invasive, and it delivers normal genes to hard-to-reach cells throughout the entire retina.

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Five New Bakar Fellows Pursue Path to Marketplace

June 11th, 2013

Five UC Berkeley scientists eager to take their lab-bench discoveries into the marketplace have been awarded Bakar Fellowships to help them achieve their goals.

The year-old Bakar Fellows Program is a unique UC Berkeley initiative to support innovative research by early career faculty, in particular those who want to focus on a project that has real-world applications in areas ranging from health care and agriculture to high-tech and biotech.

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John Flannery recipient of Foundation Fighting Blindness 2013 Board of Directors Award

May 20th, 2013

Vision Science faculty member John Flannery, professor at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, was presented with the Foundation Fighting Blindness Board of Directors Award.

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Hit a 95 mph baseball? Scientists pinpoint how we see it coming…

May 10th, 2013

How does San Francisco Giants slugger Pablo Sandoval swat a 95 mph fastball, or tennis icon Venus Williams see the oncoming ball, let alone return her sister Serena’s 120 mph serves? For the first time, vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have pinpointed how the brain tracks fast-moving objects.

Scientists pinpoint how the brain tracks a fast-moving object. The discovery advances our understanding of how humans predict the trajectory of moving objects when it can take one-tenth of a second for the brain to process what the eye sees…

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