 |
Neuroscience Institute News
Assistant Professor Jose Carmena is one of seven UC Berkeley faculty recipients of the Sloan Research Fellowships
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today (Tuesday, Feb. 17) 118 new fellowship awards to early-career scientists, seven of them young faculty researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
The seven are among scientists, mathematicians and economists from 61 U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities. Each Sloan fellow receives $50,000 to pursue whatever research he or she chooses for a period of two years.
Read the full story
'Evolved' virus may improve gene therapy for cystic fibrosis
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Iowa have turned a relatively benign virus into a highly infectious form that is ideal as a carrier for gene therapy.
In its first gene therapy test, it completely cured human cystic fibrosis lung tissue in culture.
Read the full story
Professor Martin S. Banks is one of eleven faculty members named AAAS Fellows
Eleven faculty members at the University of California, Berkeley, have been named 2008 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society.
The UC Berkeley researchers are among 486 new AAAS fellows to be named tomorrow in the Dec. 19 issue of the organization's journal, Science. The honor, bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers, recognizes distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.
Read the full story
New Clue in the Search to Predict Alzheimer’s Disease
There’s a new clue in the search to identify the harbingers of Alzheimer’s disease.
Memory loss in cognitively normal elderly people may in some cases be related to the accumulation of a plaque in the brain that is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as damage to a part of the brain that is involved in memory function, according to a recent study led by scientists from Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Berkeley.
The scientists believe this cluster of events could signal the earliest stages of the disease.
Read the full story
EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids
University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.
In a study recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.
Read the full story
Robert T. Knight, Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Award
This award, from the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, recognizes Senior U.S. Scientists. Dr. Knight's award recognizes his accomplishments in neuroscience research in the areas of frontal lobe function and cortical neurophysiology.
Professor Yang Dan is one of five UC Berkeley faculty recipients of the Howard Hughes Medical Investigator's Award
Five University of California, Berkeley, faculty members have received one of the most sought-after honors in biomedical research: appointment as Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators with guaranteed research support for five, ten or more years into the future.
Read the full story
Growth hormone also guides brain wiring
A human hormone known to stimulate the growth of cells throughout the body has a new role - helping to set up the proper nerve connections in the odor center of the brain, according to University of California, Berkeley, scientists.
Read the full story
National Academy of Sciences hosting Katherine Sherwood's 'Golgi's Door' show
Some 11 paintings and prints by UC Berkeley art professor Katherine D. Sherwood on display through Feb. 22 in the National Academy of Sciences' Rotunda Gallery in Washington, D.C. contrast historic and contemporary medical imaging with ancient symbols of magic, mystery and healing from around the globe.
Read the full story
Keeping the Body on Schedule
Hours before you wake, an inner alarm clock primes your body for a day on the go. From deep within your brain, it triggers the release of hormones that tell your cells to mobilize sugars, your blood pressure and temperature to rise, and your gut to make the enzymes that will break down breakfast. The rise and fall of these and other hormones throughout the day keep the body's systems working in harmony.
Read the full story
Sleep loss linked to psychiatric disorders
It has long been assumed that sleep deprivation can play havoc with our emotions.
Read the full story
Neuroscientists connect neural activity and blood flow in new brain stimulation technique
Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have for the first time measured the electrical activity of nerve cells and correlated it to changes in blood flow in response to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive method to stimulate neurons in the brain.
Read the full story
Pleasant odors perceived the same by different cultures
Chinese, Africans and Indians may differ in what odors they find yummy, but they all perceive pleasantness in the same way, according to the findings of neurobiologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
Read the full story
Flies prefer fizzy drinks
Fruit flies like a little seltzer in their drinks, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
Read the full story
Psych department's RSVP program invites scientists and subjects to join in demographically diverse exploration
New registry of volunteer subjects is a no-brainer that, somehow, nobody thought of before.
Read the full story
The Molecular Cascade of Stress
Under stress, our bodies follow an ancient and arcane code of instructions. At the first sense of danger, the adrenal glands unleash a flood of hormones known as glucocorticoids. These so-called stress hormones ready the body for intense physical action. They speed up the heart, deepen breathing, muscles to tremble with unaccustomed tension. But glucocorticoids also set far more subtle changes into motion. Study after study has linked stress to immune system suppression, memory impairment, hypertension, and disrupted digestion, among other ailments.
Read the full story
Two nostrils better than one, researchers show
University of California, Berkeley, graduate student Allen Liu last Friday donned coveralls, a blindfold, earplugs and gloves, then got down on all fours and sniffed out a 33-foot chocolate trail through the grass.
Read the full story
Slow brain waves play key role in coordinating complex activity
While it is widely accepted that the output of nerve cells carries information between regions of the brain, it's a big mystery how widely separated regions of the cortex involving billions of cells are linked together to coordinate complex activity.
Read the full story
Seeing two figures in coordinated action helps brain pick out movements of one
A new study by vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that the human visual system is better able to discriminate the movements of a single person when his or her actions are coordinated in a meaningful way with a second individual.
Read the full story
Kristin Scott, winner of 2006 John Merck Scholar Awards
Kristin E. Scott, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who is researching the modulation of taste perception by hunger.
Improving Impoverished Children's Brains
For the last four decades, UC Berkeley integrative biologist Marian Diamond has studied how the brains of rats are affected by enriched environments. In groundbreaking research, she quantified how good diet, stimulating games and objects, and, well, fun, spur the growth of better brains.
Read the full story
Gene therapy: Solving delivery problems
Survival of the fittest drove evolution. Now a UC Berkeley researcher is subjecting viruses to brutal competition as a tool of biomedical innovation.
Read the full story
Brain scans predict cognitive decline in normal people, says new study
Brain scans may detect neurological changes in people who exhibit no outward signs of cognitive decline but who later develop dementia or mental impairment, according to the results of a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
Read the full story
Brain hormone puts brakes on reproduction
University of California, Berkeley, researchers have discovered a new actor in the mammalian reproductive system, a hormone that fills a role long suspected, but until now undetected.
Read the full story
Scientists force virus to evolve as better delivery vehicle for gene
therapy
Viruses and humans have evolved together over millions of years in a game of one-upmanship that, often as not, left humans sick or worse.
Read the full story
Language affects half of what we see
The language we speak affects half of what we see, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago.
Read the full story
Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience Inaugural Symposium Videotape available here
Lu Chen Named MacArthur "Genius" Fellow
Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Lu Chen has been named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Read the full story
Memory loss in older adults due to distractions, not inability to focus The short-term memory problems that accompany normal aging are associated
with an inability to filter out surrounding distractions, not problems with
focusing attention, according to a study by researchers at the University
of California, Berkeley.
Read the full story
Study shows humans have ability to track odors, much like bloodhounds Though humans may never match the tracking ability of dogs, we apparently have the ability to sniff out and locate odors, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley.
Read the full story
Lu Chen Selected as Distinguished Young ScholarAssistant Professor of Neuroscience Lu Chen has been selected a 2005 Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research by the W.M. Keck Foundation
Read the full story
|
|
|
