A recent study in Cell (PDF) from the Schier lab defines candidate genes for schizophrenia and identifies shared roles for these genes. Schizophrenia is a devastating psychiatric disorder.…
Ketamine for clinical use is clouded in controversy. Hallucinogenic party drug (“Special K”) and well-known anesthetic, it is increasingly touted as a panacea at low-doses for unresponsive depression…
We have discovered that cancer might arise faster than previously thought: by combining evolution of yeast cells and human cell culture experiments Miguel Coelho and Andrew Murray were…
Transport proteins embedded in the cellular membrane move chemical cargo into and out of cells, thus facilitating the acquisition of essential nutrients. Many transport proteins evolved from a…
As a particularly accessible part of the central nervous system, the mouse retina has emerged as a favorite model for analyzing the development, structure and function of neural…
A fundamental question in neuroscience is how neural networks generate behavior. The first challenge in answering this question is to identify neurons and circuits controlling the behavior of…
Consider an encounter with a parent carrying a baby. Regardless of the baby crying, smiling or sleeping, the sight of a very young infant typically triggers a unique…
[caption]Tao Fang (l) and Hidde Ploegh[/caption] Brain is arguably the most complicated biological tissue. Many different cell types are intertwined and interconnected. Moreover the number of different cell…
A major goal of the abstract expressionist painters was to represent, convey and evoke emotion by reducing the use of color and gesture to their most basic forms.…
Witnessing in real-time firing patterns of all the neurons in the brain sounds like sci-fi, but this has already been achieved in research labs in recent years. The…
