Category Archives: Neuroscience

May 31

Professional Development Tips!

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This week, I had the pleasure of joining several UCSD Biomedical Sciences grad students and a few other Neuro grad students in a BMS-run career development course.  Over the course of 4 afternoons, I practiced the art of note-taking to add to my skill set and to prepare a tip sheet for you! Note: Your […]

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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 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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April 29

Functional Compartmentalization and Viewpoint Generalization Within the Macaque Face-Processing System

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One thing humans, and in fact all primates can do with remarkable ease compared to computers is face recognition, especially across a range of viewing conditions.  At her lab at Caltech, Doris Tsao tries to explore the way the brain does this.  In her recent Science paper, she explored view invariance in the recently discovered […]

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April 15

Vision is complex: Predicting responses despite non-linearity and heterogeneity

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What does it mean to understand vision?  Can we know how the retina will react when we see our favorite painting or our best friend before it even happens?  The work of Dr. Fred Rieke hopes to do just that.  Not unsurprisingly, vision is complex and studying it is hard.  The output neurons of the […]

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April 07

Wave makers: The origins of corticothalamic slow oscillations

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It might come as a surprise that while you’re asleep or at rest your neurons do not enjoy a similar period of tranquil inactivity, but instead remain hard at work. In fact, previous studies report that coordinated waves of slow oscillatory activity (< 1 Hz) spread through the cortex and thalamus during sleep, waking rest […]

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March 30

Arthropods: More than just a pretty face, they have brains that can preserve for over half a billion years

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Behold the Arthropods. They are invertebrates with exoskeletons, segmented bodies and jointed appendages (examples: insects, arachnids, crustaceans). Exquisitely versatile and adaptable, they comprise the most species-rich phylum and they’ve been around since at least the early Cambrian Period (541-485.4 million years ago, (Mya)). Look where you’re standing. Chances are that an athropod’s already been there […]

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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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Primate Visual Space: The Entorhinal Frontier

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Throughout the course of human history, great metaphorical emphasis has been placed on developing an understanding of our “place in the world.”  Although this proverbial construct refers more to a sense of self-efficacy, it underscores the inarguable importance of determining our position as it relates to the environment around us in producing proper behavior.  Research into the neural mechanisms […]

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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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