PhDs in Press: Winter/Spring 2014

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PhDs in Press: Winter/Spring 2014

The drought that afflicted Calfornia this winter was in no way mirrored in the publications authored by members of the Stanford Neurosciences PhD Program.

This Winter/Spring saw 10 PhD students publishing first-author papers (Lief and Joanna, Egle, Kira, Sergio and Corbett, David K, Poh Hui, Mridu and Nathan). They were joined in authorial success by an additional 13 graduate researchers who were 2nd-nth authors (Aslihan, Logan, Kelly, Ivan, Astra, Greg, Izumi, Georgia, Nick Steinmetz, Jake, Tina, Hannah and Mark; not to mention Kira and Poh Hui who also had 2nd-nth author papers). 

Witness the majestic variety of neuroscience research being done by the Stanford Neurosciences Graduate Community. The Diesseroth lab makes genetically encoded tools that use Boolean logic. The science partnership of Corbett Bennett and Sergio Arroyo continues with a review article on nicotinic modulation of cortical circuits. Paul Buckmaster's lab publishes a study of epileptic sea lions off the California coast. And so much more...

Continue below for a full list of the articles (complete with links and abstracts). 

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Brains & Bourbon Ep9 Pow! Thwacke! Brain!

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This week on Brains and Bourbon, we talk with Maral Tajerian about brains and pain, secret experiments, and putting the "science" back in "scientifically accurate video games." Dr. Tajerian is a postdoc in David Clark’s lab here at Stanford, and the co-founder of Thwacke! science media consulting.

This week on Brains and Bourbon, we talk with Maral Tajerian about brains and pain, secret experiments, and putting the "science" back in "scientifically accurate video games."

Dr. Tajerian is a postdoc in David Clark’s lab here at Stanford, and the co-founder of Thwacke! science media consulting.

Brains and Bourbon airs every Wednesday at 1pm on KZSU 90.1FM.

"We are all born scientists" Neurotalk S2E26 Daniel Colón-Ramos

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This week on Neurotalk, we chat with Daniel Colón-Ramos about how glia directs synapse formation, how synaptic positions are maintained as the body and brain grows, and how his science networking site Ciencia Puerto Rico has changed science education in Puerto Rico. Dr. Colón-Ramos is an associate professor of cell biology at Yale University, and is the founder of Ciencia Puerto Rico: http://www.cienciapr.org/

This week on Neurotalk, we chat with Daniel Colón-Ramos about how glia directs synapse formation, how synaptic positions are maintained as the body and brain grows, and how his science networking site Ciencia Puerto Rico has changed science education in Puerto Rico.

Dr. Colón-Ramos is an associate professor of cell biology at Yale University.

This is the last Neurotalk of the academic year, and we will return at the end of September. Thanks for listening!

Neurotalk S2E25 Li-Huei Tsai

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This week on Neurotalk, we chat with Li-Huei Tsai about her transition from cancer research to neuroscience, chromatin remodeling, Alzheimer's disease, and more! Dr. Tsai is a professor of neuroscience and the director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. Note to listeners: we had a few technical difficulties with the audio quality, so some portions of the interview may be difficult to hear.

In this exciting new episode of Neurotalk, we chat with Li-Huei Tsai about her transition from cancer research to neuroscience, chromatin remodeling, Alzheimer's disease, and more!

Dr. Tsai is a professor of neuroscience and the director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.

Note to listeners: we had a few technical difficulties with the audio quality, so some portions of the interview may be difficult to hear.

Ask a Neuroscientist: Does the brain have an energy budget?

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Ask a Neuroscientist: Does the brain have an energy budget?

What is the brain's energy budget? Ada Yee discusses three possible ways of assessing how the brain distributes its resources: first, by direct measurement of oxygen flow and glucose uptake; second, by examining what processes the brain sacrifices when energy gets low; and third, by calculation from known simple properties of neurons.

Photo Credit: N. Seery, Wellcome Images

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The Anesthesiology and the Ecstasy

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This week on Brains and Bourbon, we chat with Boris Heifets about anesthesia and the brain, treating Parkinson's disease with electrical stimulation, and why taking ecstasy might be a good idea if you suffer from depression*. Dr. Heifets is an anesthesiologist at Stanford Hospital, as well as a postdoctoral researcher in Rob Malenka's lab. *And you do it in your doctor's office.

This week on Brains and Bourbon,  we chat with Boris Heifets about anesthesia and the brain, treating Parkinson's disease with electrical stimulation, and why taking ecstasy might be a good idea if you suffer from depression*. 

Dr. Heifets is an anesthesiologist at Stanford Hospital, as well as a postdoctoral researcher in Rob Malenka's lab.


*And you do it in your doctor's office. 

"What are the questions that compel you?"

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This week on Neurotalk, we chat with Kelsey Martin about the road from literature to neuroscience, tagging synapses, and what to do with all these PhDs. Dr. Martin is the Chair and professor of Biological Chemistry and professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at University of California Los Angeles.

This week on Neurotalk, we chat with Kelsey Martin about the road from literature to neuroscience, tagging synapses, and what to do with all these PhDs.

Dr. Martin is the Chair and professor of Biological Chemistry and professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at University of California Los Angeles.

The Cytoskeleton: A Gift to Cell Biology from Neuroscience

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The Cytoskeleton: A Gift to Cell Biology from Neuroscience

Lately, I’ve been on the hunt for connections between cell biology, which is what I am studying for my PhD, and neuroscience, which has been the focus of this blog (see my last post, The Cell Cycle for the Neuroscientist: 3 Useful Concepts). This past weekend at a small local conference sponsored by the American Society for Cell Biology I stumbled across a doozy of a connection: the cytoskeleton. Cell biologists are obsessed with the cytoskeleton because it has a role in almost everything a cell does, from how a cell eats to how it moves, to how it holds shape and divides. But cell biologists did not discover the cytoskeleton. Neuroscientists did.

Photo credit: Matthew Daniels. Source: Wellcome Images

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