Category Archives: Journal Club

October 28

Let’s Talk About LGBTQ Visibility in Science, Baby

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In both social and scientific spheres, Dr. Ben Barres has consistently been an advocate for the little guy. He is openly transgender, and has encouraged open discussion on topics such as the marginalization of women in science. In addition, his research focuses on glia, which could also be considered as the marginalized cells within neuroscience […]

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October 20

Molecular routes of memory enhancement

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Most students are no strangers to cognitive enhancers such as caffeine or Adderall. However, these and other cognitive enhancers tend to have non-specific effects on the nervous system (e.g., jitteriness), or are specifically formulated for a disease or disorder1. Drugs or treatments that specifically target some aspect of a cognitive behavior are lacking, and require […]

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May 25

Fly Eyes!

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Imagine what it would feel like to be a fly, with most of your head covered in eyes, allowing you to see in pretty much any direction. That’s exactly what Axel Borst studies: motion vision in the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), one of the most widely studied species of fly. The behavioral model that has […]

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May 12

Wiring Eyes

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We can probably all agree that eyes would just be useless bags of vitreous humor if not for their wiring to the brain.  It’s the highly precise connections between specialized cell types within the eye and their specific target cells within the brain that allow us to visually experience our world.  But how do these […]

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May 06

Dissecting circuits: Bridging the gap from circuits to behavior

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Chalasani S.H., Chronis N., Tsunozaki M., Gray J.M., Ramot D., Goodman M.B. & Bargmann C.I. (2007). Dissecting a circuit for olfactory behaviour in Caenorhabditis elegans, Nature, 450 (7166) 63-70. DOI: 10.1038/nature06292

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Carla Shatz: An Inspiration for Women in Neuroscience

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Dr. Carla Shatz is a woman of many firsts. She began her career in neuroscience as the first undergraduate student of Drs. David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel of Harvard Medical School (yes, that Hubel and Wiesel who won the Nobel Prize for their work on the visual system in 1981).  After graduating from Radcliffe College […]

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A brave foray into the daunting complexity of the human cortex

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Understanding the organization of human cortex has proven to be more difficult than examining that of other animals. For instance, we are more limited in the methods we can use to investigate human cortical networks. Brodmann attempted to classify and name human cerebral cortex by studying the cytoarchitecture of post-mortem brains; his legacy was a […]

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Decision making and degree of confidence – How confident are you about your choices?

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We are making decisions based on our sensation in our daily life. When playing football you may want to throw a ball to the place where fewer opposing players are running. However, sometimes you have to make decisions without full confidence, for example when you can only glance at a group of players running around […]

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Hungry? Why wait?* Intermittent fasting improves functional recovery after spinal cord injury.

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Spinal cord injury (SCI), while typically anatomically incomplete, often results in the dramatic loss of sensory and motor function with limited recovery. Dr. Wolfram Tetzlaff, the Associate Director of the International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries (ICORD) and professor in the Departments of Zoology and Surgery at the University of British Columbia, investigated the efficacy of […]

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We are all connected: Major insights are emerging from human connectomes

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David Van Essen is from Washington University where he is an Edison Professor of Neurobiology and Department Head of Anatomy and Neurobiology.  He is also a principle investigator of the Human Connectome Project (HCP), a project designed to map the human connectome as accurately as possible in a large number of normal adults and make […]

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