Neurons in youth
Have you ever wondered why infants can learn foreign languages easily, while older children and parents struggle? Or why your third-grader can fix your computer, but you can barely check your email?...
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Rebuilding the brain’s circuitry
Neuron transplants have repaired brain circuitry and substantially normalized function in mice with a brain disorder, an advance indicating that key areas of the mammalian brain are more reparable than...
View ArticleClues to addiction
Harvard scientists have developed the fullest picture yet of how neurons in the brain interact to reinforce behaviors ranging from learning to drug use, a finding that might open the door to new...
View ArticleDeciding to go left or right
For decades, scientists have associated binary decision making — opting to go left or right — with higher-ranking animals, including humans. A team of Harvard researchers, however, is rewriting that...
View ArticleThe growing brain
Conventional wisdom suggests that the brain’s branches develop as a newborn begins to experience the world. With more experience, those connections are strengthened, and new branches emerge as the baby...
View ArticleResearchers awarded NARSAD grants
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation announced $11.9 million in new research grants, strengthening its investment in the most promising ideas to lead to breakthroughs in understanding and...
View ArticleListening for clues
Baby songbirds learn to sing by imitation, just as human babies do. So researchers at Harvard and Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, have been studying the brains of zebra finches — red-beaked,...
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Controlling behavior, remotely
In the quest to understand how the brain turns sensory input into behavior, Harvard scientists have crossed a major threshold. Using precisely targeted lasers, researchers have been able to take over a...
View ArticleSniff mechanics
Harvard scientists are shedding light on a neural feedback mechanism that may play a key role in how the olfactory system works in the brain. The mechanism was first identified more than a century ago,...
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First Santiago Ramón y Cajal Professor is named
Jeff Lichtman, the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and a world leader in using advanced imaging techniques to study the wiring of the brain and nervous system, has been...
View ArticleA look inside the lab
Anyone who’s ever wondered about the sort of cutting-edge research that takes place in Harvard’s labs will now have the chance to find out. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Division of Science...
View ArticleThe motivation to move
Suppose you had $1,000 to invest in the stock market. How would you decide to pick one stock over another? Scientists have made great progress in understanding the neuroscience behind how people choose...
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‘Brainbow,’ version 2.0
The breakthrough technique that allowed scientists to obtain one-of-a-kind, colorful images of the myriad connections in the brain and nervous system is about to get a significant upgrade. A group of...
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Harvard Medical School researchers crawl a neural network
Scientists can finally look at circuits in the brain in all of their complexity. How the mind works is one of the greatest mysteries in nature, and this research presents a new and powerful way for us...
View ArticleNew ALS gene identified
A collaborative research effort spanning nearly a decade between Harvard researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and King’s College London (KCL) has identified a novel gene for inherited...
View ArticleHigher temperatures lead to more severe headaches
Although large numbers of headache sufferers, particularly individuals who struggle with migraines, attribute their pain to the weather, there has been little scientific evidence to back up their...
View ArticleHearing could hold key to unlocking schizophrenia mystery
Measuring brain waves in response to hearing a variety of tones appears to be a useful way to begin understanding the underlying genetic abnormalities associated with schizophrenia, says a study...
View ArticleAngiogenesis inhibitor improves brain tumor survival by reducing swelling
The beneficial effects of anti-angiogenesis drugs in the treatment of the deadly brain tumors called glioblastomas appear to result primarily from reduction of edema – the swelling of brain tissue –...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleModification of mutant Huntington’s protein increases its clearance from...
A new study has identified a potential strategy for removing the abnormal protein that causes Huntington’s disease (HD) from brain cells, which could slow the progression of the devastating...
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