Neuroscience Institute News


Robert T. Knight, Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, is the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Award.

This award, from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany, recognizes Senior U.S. Scientists for accomplishments in research and teaching.


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, 10 or more years into the future.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Sleep loss linked to psychiatric disorders

It has long been assumed that sleep deprivation can play havoc with our emotions.

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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.

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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.

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Flies prefer fizzy drinks

Fruit flies like a little seltzer in their drinks, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Lu Chen Selected as Distinguished Young Scholar
Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Lu Chen has been selected a 2005 Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research by the W.M. Keck Foundation

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