Hillel Adesnik promoted to Associate Professor
Hillel Adesnik studies the dynamics of neural circuits underlying information processing in the cerebral cortex. His lab seeks to understand how cortical microcircuits process sensory information to drive behavior.
Dopamine’s yin-yang personality: It’s an upper and a downer
For decades, psychologists have viewed the neurotransmitter dopamine as a double-edged sword: released in the brain as a reward to train us to seek out pleasurable experiences, but also a “drug” the constant pursuit of which leads to addiction. According to a new study from UC Berkeley, that’s only one face of dopamine. The flip […]
PhD program alum Emily Cooper returns to Berkeley as faculty, studying vision in the real world and applying it to virtual worlds
“In order to understand any perceptual system, such as the human visual system, you also have to have a deep understanding of the natural environments in which that system evolved to operate, and the tasks that the organism needs to perform.” Emily Cooper, PhD program alum (entering class of 2007) Emily Cooper is not […]
Postdocs Pioneer Novel Device to Trace Neural Signals in the Living Brain
In the lab of MCB’s Hillel Adesnik, three postdocs with diverse academic backgrounds have made dramatic progress on instrumentation to enable the creation, manipulation, and editing of brain activity. Their work will help advance the fundamental research necessary to pursue treatments for dementia, Parkinson’s and other diseases of the brain. Ian Oldenburg and Alan Mardinly […]
Playing high school football changes the teenage brain
A single season of high school football may be enough to cause microscopic changes in the structure of the brain, according to a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley, Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The researchers used a new type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to take brain […]
To predict the future, the brain has two clocks
That moment when you step on the gas pedal a split second before the light changes, or when you tap your toes even before the first piano note of Camila Cabello’s “Havana” is struck. That’s anticipatory timing. One type relies on memories from past experiences. The other on rhythm. Both are critical to our ability […]
Poor sleep can be the cause of anxiety, study finds
A sleepless night can leave the brain spinning with anxiety the next day. In healthy adults, overnight sleep deprivation will trigger anxiety the next morning, along with altered brain activity patterns, scientists reported at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on Nov. 4. People with anxiety disorders often have trouble sleeping. The new results uncover […]
Overlooked history: Burt Green Wilder debunked biased claims about brain size and pioneered neuroscience outreach to children
In the mid-19th through the early-20th century, measuring postmortem brains to draw conclusions about their owners was in vogue. Neuroscientists collected and measured brains of “eminent” figures, criminals, and people of different races and sexes in an attempt to identify differences in neuroanatomy between these groups. Many claimed that the brains of people of color […]
Chronically anxious? Deep sleep may take the edge off
Extreme angst is on the rise nationally and globally, especially among teens and millennials. Among other factors, preliminary findings from UC Berkeley sleep researchers point to a chronic lack of deep restorative sleep. Investigating the neural link between sleep and anxiety, UC Berkeley neuroscientists Matthew Walker and Eti Ben Simon are finding that non-Rapid Eye […]