Category: Research News

  • TCCI® Investigator Professor Yu Jintai’s Team Discovers Correlations between Environmental Factors and Longevity

    TCCI® Investigator Professor Yu Jintai’s Team Discovers Correlations between Environmental Factors and Longevity

    Professor Yu Jintai, a researcher from the Neurology Department of Fudan University-affiliated Huashan Hospital and a Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute Investigator, and his team revealed for the first time a correlation between longevity and controllable environmental factors. Their findings were published July 20 2021 in the medical journal, BMC Medicine.   In his research, […]

  • Why is it so hard to quit drugs? Revealing the neurological mechanisms behind drug cravings.

    Why is it so hard to quit drugs? Revealing the neurological mechanisms behind drug cravings.

    TCCI® investigator, Professor Yuan Tifei from Shanghai Mental Health Center and his team recently worked with Professor Luo Wenbo’s team from Liaoning Normal University on research, published in Molecular Psychiatry, that revealed key findings related to the neurological mechanisms behind drug cravings.   Previous studies both in laboratory animals and humans have reported that abstinence induces incubation […]

  • Identifying the Neural Link Between Gut Bacteria and Social Behavior in Mice

    Identifying the Neural Link Between Gut Bacteria and Social Behavior in Mice

    New research conducted primarily in the laboratory of Sarkis Mazmanian, Luis B. and Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology, HRMI Investigator and affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech, shows that germs living inside our bodies could be affecting our ability to socialize and make friends…at least for mice. […]

  • Neural Circuitry Underlying REM Sleep

    Neural Circuitry Underlying REM Sleep

    Professor Zhili Huang, a researcher from Fudan University, president of the Chinese Sleep Research Society and a Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute (TCCI®) Investigator, recently published a paper titled “Neural Circuitry Underlying REM Sleep: A review of the literature and current concepts” in the journal Progress in Neurobiology.   In the paper, Professor Huang discussed […]

  • Computers Predict People’s Tastes in Art

    Computers Predict People’s Tastes in Art

    A new Caltech study, appearing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, shows that a simple computer program can accurately predict which style of paintings a person will like. Using Amazon’s crowdsourcing platform Mechanical Turk to enlist more than 1,500 volunteers to rate paintings in the genres of impressionism, cubism, abstract, and color field, the volunteers’ […]

  • Recording Brain Activity with Laser Light

    Recording Brain Activity with Laser Light

    A Caltech professor, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Southern California, has demonstrated for the first time a new technology for imaging the human brain using laser light and ultrasonic sound waves.   The technology, known as photoacoustic computerized tomography, or PACT, has been developed by Lihong Wang, Bren Professor of Medical Engineering […]

  • Decoding the Association between Blood Pressure and Cognitive Impairment

    Decoding the Association between Blood Pressure and Cognitive Impairment

    Professor Yu Jintai, a researcher from the Neurology Department of Fudan University-affiliated Huashan Hospital and Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute (TCCI®) Investigator, revealed an association between blood pressure and the risk of cognitive impairment and dementia through a large-scale, five-year cohort study in partnership with a research team led by Professor Tan Lan from the […]

  • Hungry Fruit Flies are Extreme Ultramarathon Fliers

    Hungry Fruit Flies are Extreme Ultramarathon Fliers

    In 2005, an ultramarathon runner ran continuously 560 kilometers (350 miles) in 80 hours, without sleeping or stopping. This distance was roughly 324,000 times the runner’s body length. Caltech scientists have discovered that fruit flies can fly up to 15 kilometers (9 miles) in a single journey—6 million times their body length, or the equivalent […]

  • Reading Minds with Ultrasound: A Less-Invasive Technique to Decode the Brain’s Intentions

    Reading Minds with Ultrasound: A Less-Invasive Technique to Decode the Brain’s Intentions

    Mapping neural activity to corresponding behaviors is a major goal for neuroscientists developing brain–machine interfaces (BMIs): devices that read and interpret brain activity and transmit instructions to a computer or machine. Though this may seem like science fiction, existing BMIs can, for example, connect a paralyzed person with a robotic arm; the device interprets the […]

  • “What Is a Short Squeeze?” and Other Pressing Stock Market Questions Answered

    “What Is a Short Squeeze?” and Other Pressing Stock Market Questions Answered

    Recently, the video game retailer GameStop and other struggling companies were part of an unprecedented movement in financial history in which armchair traders wildly disrupted the stock market. The traders’ meddling was possible thanks to online forums like those on Reddit and trading platforms such as Robinhood that let people buy and sell stocks for […]