Category: Research News

  • Scientists Can Now Predict Intelligence from Brain Scans

    Scientists Can Now Predict Intelligence from Brain Scans

    Ralph Adolphs, Director of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center, together with researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of Salerno has shown that their new computing tool can predict a person’s intelligence from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of their resting state brain activity. Functional MRI develops a map of brain activity by […]

  • Paralyzed Patient Feels Sensation After Caltech Researchers Stimulate His Brain

    Paralyzed Patient Feels Sensation After Caltech Researchers Stimulate His Brain

    Scientists at Caltech have, for the first time, induced natural sensations in the arm of a paralyzed man by stimulating a certain region of the brain with a tiny array of electrodes. The work could one day allow paralyzed people using prosthetic limbs to feel physical feedback from sensors placed on these devices.   The […]

  • How Insects Can Help Us Understand Evolution

    How Insects Can Help Us Understand Evolution

    Watch this interview with Joe Parker, an entomologist, assistant professor of biology and affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech. Joe ‘s decades-long fascination with bugs and beetles led him to study a particular species of beetle that might help us answer some of the fundamental questions of evolution.   […]

  • Mapping the Neural Circuit Governing Thirst

    Mapping the Neural Circuit Governing Thirst

    Yuki Oka, an affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech, has discovered the circuit of neurons in the mouse brain that regulates thirst by stimulating or suppressing the drive to drink water. His research also provides insight into how the human brain recognizes when a person is dehydrated […]

  • Understanding the Brain’s Fear Circuit

    Understanding the Brain’s Fear Circuit

    Dean Mobbs, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience had a paper published in the March 6 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mobbs and his co-authors show for the first time that there are two areas of the brain involved in processing […]

  • You Don’t Think Your Way Out of a Tiger Attack

    You Don’t Think Your Way Out of a Tiger Attack

    In a paper appearing in the March 6 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Caltech Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience Dean Mobbs and his co-authors show for the first time that there are two areas of the brain involved in processing fear. The areas, which they call “fear circuits,” split up the responsibility for […]

  • New Caltech Research Provides Insight into How the Brain Works to Recall Memories

    New Caltech Research Provides Insight into How the Brain Works to Recall Memories

    Caltech researchers discover that neurons within the posterior parietal cortex gather information about our memories to help us make memory-based decisions.   News Source: Pasadena Now

  • Video: Uncovering the mysteries of the mind

    Video: Uncovering the mysteries of the mind

    Textbook theories in the field of brain science have not fully illuminated this complex, intriguing and profound subject. How do neurons talk to each other? How does sensation lead to perception that would in turn influence cognition and action?   In this episode, the Chens share how their curiosity in understanding brain functionality has fuelled […]

  • Caltech Research: Nature or Nurture? Innate Social Behaviors in the Mouse Brain

    Caltech Research: Nature or Nurture? Innate Social Behaviors in the Mouse Brain

    Source: Caltech   Adult male mice have a simple repertoire of innate, or instinctive, social behaviors: When encountering a female, a male mouse will try to mate with it, and when encountering another male, the mouse will attack. The animals do not have to be taught to perform these behaviors. This has led to the widespread […]

  • Caltech Research: The Neural Codes for Body Movements

    Caltech Research: The Neural Codes for Body Movements

    Source: Caltech   A small patch of neurons in the brain can encode the movements of many body parts, according to researchers in the laboratory of Caltech’s Richard Andersen, James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center Leadership Chair, and Director of the T&C Brain-Machine Interface Center of the Tianqiao and […]