Tag: Neuroscience

  • Nation & World

    Building a better brain

    New book chronicles how the mind works and how we can influence that to help ourselves succeed.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Memories are made of this

    In a lecture, neuroscientist Eric Kandel ’52 said that researchers have learned that short-term memory, the ability to recall things for minutes or hours, is fundamentally different from long-term memory, which holds information for weeks, months, even a lifetime.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dowling awarded the Glenn A. Fry Medal in Physiological Optics

    John E. Dowling, the Gordon and Llura Gund Professor of Neurosciences at Harvard, was awarded the Glenn A. Fry Medal in Physiological Optics during a ceremony at the Great Lakes Vision Research Conference in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 21.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Hub lab writing the book on face-reading

    Pity the Boston car salesman who negotiated across the table from Charles A. Nelson III, a Harvard neuroscience professor who runs the nation’s top laboratory studying how people learn to decode facial expressions…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Medical grants a boon for Mass.

    Massachusetts biomedical researchers are seeing a windfall from federal stimulus money, with the state receiving more in grants from the National Institutes of Health than all others but California.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Jack H. Mendelson

    Jack H. Mendelson, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry (Neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center at McLean Hospital died on August 15, 2007, after a brief illness; he was 77 years old. Jack devoted his research career to clinical, behavioral, and biological studies of alcoholism and drug abuse.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Chylack, Dowling ARVO Fellows

    The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) has named Harvard Professor of Ophthalmology Leo T. Chylack Jr., and Gordon and Llura Gund Professor of Neurosciences John E. Dowling as 2009 fellows. Chylack and Dowling will receive their fellowships in May at the annual ARVO meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Neural wiring hints at nervous system gene limits

    Genetics may play a surprisingly small role in determining the precise wiring of the mammalian nervous system, according to painstaking mapping of every neuron projecting to a small muscle mice use to move their ears. These first-ever mammalian “connectomes,” or complete neural circuit diagrams, reveal that neural wiring can vary widely even in paired tissues…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Art and science: Healing in harmony

    What do Julie Andrews and Mozart have in common? And what links Hillary Clinton, Che Guevara, and Cameron Diaz? The former have absolute or perfect pitch; the latter are tone-deaf. How our brains differ to create these disparities was one of the subjects of “Crossing the Corpus Callosum,” a first-of-its-kind symposium held Jan. 10 at…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Isolating creativity in the brain

    How — exactly — does improvisation happen? What’s involved when a musician sits down at the piano and plays flurries of notes in a free fall, without a score, without knowing much about what will happen moment to moment? Is it possible to find the sources of a creative process?

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Neural mapping paints a haphazard picture of odor receptors

    Despite the striking aromatic differences between coffee, peppermint, and pine, a new mapping of the nose’s neural circuitry suggests a haphazard patchwork where the receptors for such disparate scents are as likely as not to be neighbors.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Anesthetic causes changes in mouse brains

    For the first time researchers have shown that a commonly used anesthetic can produce changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the brains of living mammals, confirming previous laboratory studies. In their Annals of Neurology report, which has received early online release, a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators shows how administration of the gas…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Dowling recipient of Paul Kayser Award

    John E. Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Professor of Neurosciences of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology as well as professor of Ophthalmology in Neuroscience, recently received the Paul Kayser International Award in Retina Research from the International Society for Eye Research (ISER). He received the award at the 2008 Biennial Congress held in…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Technique offers close-ups of electrons and nuclei

    Providing a glimpse into the infinitesimal, physicists have found a novel way to spy on some of the universe’s tiniest building blocks. Their “camera,” described this week (Oct. 1) in the journal Nature, consists of a special “flaw” in diamonds that can be manipulated into sensitively monitoring magnetic signals from individual electrons and atomic nuclei…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New approach to gene therapy may shrink brain tumors, prevent their spread

    Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new approach to gene therapy for brain tumors — delivering a cancer-fighting gene to normal brain tissue around the tumor to keep it from spreading. An animal study described in the journal Molecular Therapy, the first study to test the feasibility of such an approach, found that…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    HSCI researchers see major breakthrough

    In a feat of biological prestidigitation likely to turn the field of regenerative medicine on its head, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) co-director Doug Melton and postdoctoral fellow Qiao “Joe” Zhou report having achieved what has long been a dream and ultimate goal of developmental biologists — directly turning a fully formed adult cell into…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Susan Carey awarded Rumelhart Prize

    Susan Carey, a Harvard psychologist whose work has explored fundamental issues surrounding the nature of the human mind, has been awarded the 2009 David E. Rumelhart Prize, given annually since 2001 for significant contributions to the theoretical foundation of human cognition.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Science in brief

    Researchers identify promising cancer drug target in prostate tumors; Scientists find how neural activity spurs blood flow in the brain: Newfound mechanisms could bolster understanding of brain imaging, aging’s effects; World Health Organization creates new surgical tool to make operations safer everywhere; Invasive treatment appears beneficial for men and high-risk women with certain type of…

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scientists learn what’s ‘up’ with retinal cells

    Harvard University researchers have discovered a new type of retinal cell that plays an exclusive and unusual role in mice: detecting upward motion. The cells reflect their function in the physical arrangement of their dendrites, branchlike structures on neuronal cells that form a communicative network with other dendrites and neurons in the brain.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Link between deep sleep and visual learning

    A relationship has been observed between deep sleep and the ability of the brain to learn specific tasks. Researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have now shown that the processes that regulates deep sleep may affect visual learning. These results are published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Flavell receives Weintraub Award

    Neuroscience Ph.D. candidate Steven Flavell has been selected, along with a dozen other graduate students from North America, to receive the 2008 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award sponsored by the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC).

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    How brain cells make good connections

    Harvard neuroscientist Venkatesh N. Murthy has a sunny second-floor office on Divinity Avenue, where he is a professor in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. In one corner is a set of weights and a soccer ball — both untouched in over a year, he said, because of an intensely busy schedule.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Pauletta Washington honored

    There was no debating the glamour of the Harvard Foundation’s black-tie, red-carpet premiere of “The Great Debaters,” starring and directed by Denzel Washington, at the Harvard Film Archive at the Carpenter Center. Close to 200 students, faculty, and staff attended the Dec. 18 premiere, which was followed by a lively question-and-answer session with Washington and…

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Research in brief

    Major differences in protocols used to determine brain death; Harvard researchers achieve stem cell milestone; Consortium links chromosome abnormality to autism disorders; Blocking HIV infection; Oral osteoporosis meds appear to reduce the risk of jaw degradation; Six new genetic variants linked to heart-disease risk factor; Gene variation may elevate risk of liver tumor in some…

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Drug helps certain brain tumor patients live longer

    People who receive high doses of the chemotherapy drug methotrexate to treat a certain type of brain tumor appear to live longer than people receiving other treatments, according to research published in the Jan. 29 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Slow reading in dyslexia is tied to disorganized brain tracts

    Dyslexia marked by poor reading fluency — slow and choppy reading — may be caused by disorganized, meandering tracts of nerve fibers in the brain, according to researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Their study, using the latest imaging methods, gives researchers a glimpse of what may go wrong…

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Scientists image vivid ‘brainbows’

    By activating multiple fluorescent proteins in neurons, neuroscientists at Harvard University are imaging the brain and nervous system as never before, rendering these cells in a riotous spray of colors dubbed a “Brainbow.”

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Decisions, decisions … and how we make them

    How much of our decision making is controlled by rational thought, and how much is determined by more primitive brain structures? How do we rationalize decisions based on the latter?…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mendelson, substance abuse research pioneer, 77

    Jack H. Mendelson, director of McLean Hospital’s Clinical Research Program on Substance Abuse, co-director of its Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center (ADARC), and professor of psychiatry (neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School (HMS), passed away on Aug. 15 after a brief illness. He was 77.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘I want to know what it is to be a human being’

    One day earlier this month, Sean Dorrance Kelly was at work in his sunny Emerson Hall office. On one side of his desk were books — a ceiling-high, room-wide stack of tomes ranging from Greek editions of Homer and contemporary works of neuroscience to books on twenthieth-century French, German, and Anglo-American philosophy.

    6 minutes