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In a paper entitled The functional diversity of retinal ganglion cells in the mouse, the authors provide a new and startling classification of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) by recording their real-time activity in response to visual input, revealing many new types of cells.
Read MoreAlthough we would like to think of ourselves as independent readers and thoughtful evaluators of published data, it turns out that figure format heavily influences our perception of the data – even when the data points represented by the figure are identical. In this edition of "New in Neuroscience," Kat Kozyrytska describes a study by Prof. Barbara Tversky, who looks at the way people have been representing information visually for thousands of years.
Image credit: Kat Kozyrytska
Read MoreHave you ever woken up in the morning to the refreshing aroma wafting from the neighborhood cafe? Does it remind you of the last Christmas Eve sitting with family enjoying a cup of coffee, or the cozy conversations with an old friend in you two’s favorite coffee shop? Smelling an odor can cause an emotional reaction or elicit a memory that is unique to that individual person.
Read MoreEach year, approximately 61.5 million Americans are afflicted by a mental illness. Although we have not yet determined the underlying cause of these disorders, scientists believe that genetic mutations play a major role. Human genetic testing has identified multiple “risk genes” that are associated with major psychiatric disorders, but little is known about how mutations in the same risk gene can contribute to different disorders.
Read MoreUntil the late 20th century, scientists believed the adult brain was hardwired. We now know that adult brains are actually quite plastic, capable of generating new neurons and remodeling after experience or injury. A recent study by Villa et al. visualized remodeling in a living mouse brain and proposes a mechanism through which neurons maintain balance in a changing environment, as if walking a tightrope between excitation and inhibition.
Image Credit: George E. Curtis, 1876 (Maria Spelterini crossing Niagara Falls by tightrope)
Read MoreWhy doesn't the brain do everything at once? Or, to put it another way, why does the brain have specialized parts? Dr. Adrienne Mueller discusses the question of brain efficiency, and what "specialization" means within the brain.
Image credit: Spooky Pooka, Wellcome Images
Read MoreOur guest is Olaf Sporns, Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington and co-director of the Indiana University Network Science Institute. We speak with him about network theory, “rich clubs” in the brain, and jump-starting the “connectomics” movement.
It's the first segment in our on-going series of Brain Day Questions, where we answer questions submitted by 7th grade students from Palo Alto and East Palo Alto classrooms.
In our inaugural post, Dr. Adrienne Mueller explains how the brain works in the body.
Read MoreBrain Day, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, brings Stanford neuroscientists into all of the 7th grade science classrooms in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto to introduce young students to neuroscience, and answer their brain-themed questions. Kendra Lechtenberg explains how this spring, she's going digital with some of the Brain Day questions.
Image credit: Tintin44 on Flickr
Read MoreMy baseball coach always told me to pay attention to the crack of the bat because it would make it easier to find the ball from the outfield. He was right! This combined processing of visual and auditory information is called multisensory integration and has been shown to enhance perception.
Read MoreHome of NeuWrite West and the Stanford Neuroblog.
Do you have burning questions about how the brain works? You’ve come to the right place! Submit all your questions to NeuWrite West and we will have a neuroscientist research and answer your question.
Note: The NeuWrite West team consists of research scientists. Therefore, we can not provide answers to questions of a medical nature; we are not medical doctors.
Questions will have a turn-around time of approximately one month.
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