Tag: neurobiology

  • Nation & World

    New University-wide institute to integrate natural, artificial intelligence

    University-wide initiative made possible by gift from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg.

    14 minutes
    Sham Kakade and Bernardo Sabatino.
  • Nation & World

    Explain your thesis in 3 minutes

    A contest has College seniors who spent months researching and writing their theses distill those hours of work and hundreds of pages of analysis into a 3-minute pitch.

    1 minute
    Hakeem Angulu makes his award-winning pitch.
  • Nation & World

    Beyond Pavlov

    Artificial intelligence researchers and neurobiologists share data on how options are sorted in decision-making.

    4 minutes
    Researchers standing on stairwell.
  • Nation & World

    Easy on the eyes

    New computer program uses artificial intelligence to determine what visual neurons like to see. The approach could shed light on learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, and other neurologic conditions.

    4 minutes
    Photo manip of a person in profile, over clouds
  • Nation & World

    Rewinding the brain

    Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Paola Arlotta is seeking to develop a new tool to understanding brain function and dysfunction: self-generating brain organoids.

    9 minutes
    Paola Arlotta.
  • Nation & World

    Harvard’s immersion in neuroscience

    In a Q&A session, Harvard Provost Alan Garber talks about the recent “Faculty Symposium: Insights in Neuroscience,” hosted by his office and the Life Sciences Steering Group, about science broadly at Harvard, and the growing interdependence among all scientific disciplines.

    10 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Funny how the brain works

    Brooke Bourgeois has evolved from a science newbie into a senior about to graduate with a degree in neurobiology and her sights set on medical school. Funny thing, though, she’s also a performer and an artist.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Love interrupted

    A new study by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center examines the neuroanatomy behind delusional misidentification syndromes.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Neurons reprogrammed in animals

    Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have shown that the networks of communication among reprogrammed neurons and their neighbors in the brains of living animals can also be changed, or “rewired.”

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Ahead of her time

    Saheela Ibraheem has always been ahead of her time and is graduating from Harvard College this spring at just 20, a neurobiology concentrator who is looking forward to pursuing a career in academia.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Funding for projects with promise

    Four scientists from across Harvard will receive nearly $8 million in grant funding through the National Institutes of Health’s High Risk-High Reward program to support research into a variety of biomedical questions, ranging from how the bacterial cell wall is constructed to how the blood-brain barrier works.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Junk?’ Not so fast

    Research by Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists shows that much lincRNA, which had been generally believed useless, plays an important role in the genome.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Driving toward the future

    In four years at Harvard College, hard work and determination have propelled Patrick Staropoli to a 3.94 grade point average and earned him a place in Phi Beta Kappa. But when folks in Staropoli’s home state of Florida talk about his drive, they’re usually referring to the fact that he races super late-model series stock…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Initiative challenges drug crisis

    Taking aim at the alarming slowdown in the development of new and lifesaving drugs, Harvard Medical School is launching the Initiative in Systems Pharmacology, a comprehensive strategy to transform drug discovery by convening biologists, chemists, pharmacologists, physicists, computer scientists, and clinicians to explore together how drugs work in complex systems.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Leslie Valiant wins Turing Award

    The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) today (March 9) named Leslie G. Valiant the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard’s lasting effect

    Harvard senior Marcel Moran recalls the classes he loved. But, more important, he realizes how his education has helped him to analyze and synthesize what he learned while at Harvard.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    When one sentence just won’t do

    A Harvard College senior discusses the difficulties of explaining her senior thesis in the sciences, particularly since the topic can make people cringe.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Smelling the light

    Harvard neurobiologists have created mice that can “smell” light, providing a new tool that could help researchers better understand complex perception systems that do not lend themselves to easy study with traditional methods.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Exercise, calorie restrictions can rejuvenate older synapses

    Harvard researchers have uncovered a mechanism in mice through which caloric restriction and exercise delay some of the debilitating effects of aging by rejuvenating the connections between nerves and the muscles that they control.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Did rapid brain evolution make humans susceptible to Alzheimers?

    Of the millions of animals on Earth, including the relative handful that are considered the most intelligent — including apes, whales, crows, and owls — only humans experience the severe…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Fishing for new medications

    A robust new technique for screening drugs’ effects on zebrafish behavior is pointing Harvard scientists toward unexpected compounds and pathways that may govern sleep and wakefulness in humans. Among their…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Light used to map effect of neurons on one another

    Harvard scientists have used light and genetic trickery to trace out neurons’ ability to excite or inhibit one another, literally shedding new light on the question of how neurons interact…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Neural response to electrical currents isn’t localized, as previously believed

    For more than a century, scientists have been using electrical stimulation to explore and treat the human brain. The technique has helped identify regions responsible for specific neural functions and has been used to treat a variety of conditions from Parkinson’s disease to depression. Yet no one has been able to see what actually happens…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Newly discovered pheromone helps female flies tell suitors to ‘buzz off’

    There she is again: the cute girl at the mall. Big eyes. Long legs. She smiles at you. You’re about to make your move … but wait! What’s she wearing?…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Researchers identify the brain’s on-off switch for fear

    Harvard researchers at McLean Hospital have identified a particular protein in the brain that serves as a trigger for the body’s innate fear response. This discovery suggests a potential target…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Some vocal-mimicking animals, particularly parrots, can move to a musical beat

    Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Long-lasting nerve block could change pain management

    Harvard researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have developed a slow-release anesthetic drug-delivery system that could potentially revolutionize treatment of pain during and after surgery, and may also have a large impact on chronic pain management.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Lighting up Parkinson’s disease research

    Most people do not think of jellyfish at the mention of Parkinson’s disease research. But, at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND), researchers Pamela McLean and Bradley Hyman are…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A mother’s criticism touches nerve in formerly depressed

    Formerly depressed women show patterns of brain activity when they are criticized by their mothers that are distinctly different from the patterns shown by never-depressed controls, according to a new…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Five at Harvard named HHMI Early Career Scientists;

    Five Harvard scientists are among 50 young scientists  nationwide who will have their work supported for the next six years by a new initiative from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute…

    7 minutes