Tag: Jeffrey D. Macklis

  • Science & Tech

    ‘The art of seeing things invisible’

    “This is a wonderful story of collaboration and imagination,” said Harvard President Drew Faust, moments before cutting a ribbon yesterday afternoon to open the new Harvard Center for Biological Imaging (CBI). The facility, on the second floor of the BioLabs at 16 Divinity Ave., is not just another room filled with microscopes. For everything about the facility is unique, from…

    4–6 minutes
  • Health

    Stem cells open window on disease processes

    A panel of Harvard Stem Cell Institute experts said recently that stem cell research’s biggest impact on patients’ health likely won’t come from therapies that inject stem cells or implant tissues made from them, but rather from the knowledge gained by examining diseased tissues grown from the cells. Kenneth Chien, head of the Harvard Stem…

    3–5 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Growth of spinal nerves is improved

    Nerves that control the highest level of voluntary movements have been isolated and secrets of their growth revealed for the first time. During development, these nerves extend themselves from the brain to all levels of the spine with the help of a potent growth factor called IGF-1. This factor is well known to scientists. However,…

    2–3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Mad cow protein found to have a sane side

    It’s a devastating disease, changing behavior, causing uncontrolled movements, blindness, coma, and, finally, death. And we all have the makings of it in our heads. When it topples cows, it’s known as mad cow disease. The human form is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In sheep, it’s scrapie. It’s a rare malady caused by a misshapen protein…

    2–3 minutes
  • Campus & Community

    Decoding the babel of brain cells

    If brain cell messages could be separated from the “noise” of other brain activity and clearly understood, researchers would be closer to repairing damage caused by a number of nervous system diseases paralyzing injuries and combat wounds. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have actually done this with mice. They…

    1–2 minutes
  • Health

    Birth of new brain cells induced in birds

    Stem cells that are naturally present in the brains of finches were induced to replace lost cells and restore the birds’ ability to sing their distinctive song. “Our results represent the restoration of a brain circuit involved in a complex learned behavior,” says Jeffrey Macklis, associate professor of neurology in the Division of Neuroscience at…

    1–2 minutes