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Two New Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators Named
Caltech professors Viviana Gradinaru (BS ’05) and André Hoelz have been named among 26 new investigators of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). They join a community of more than 250 HHMI investigators across fields ranging from neuroscience to immunology to structural biology. Gradinaru is the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Neuroscience and Biological […]
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‘Magic Mushrooms’ Work By Scrambling Key Brain Network
In a new study researchers report that psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms, temporarily scrambles a critical network of brain areas involved in introspective thinking such as daydreaming and remembering. People who consume psilocybin-containing mushrooms—otherwise known as magic mushrooms—typically undergo a surreal experience in which their sense of space, time and self is distorted. […]
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Neural Network Learns to Build Maps using Minecraft
Imagine you are in the middle of an unknown town. Even if your surroundings are initially unfamiliar, you can explore around and eventually create a mental map of your environment—where the buildings, streets, signs, and so on are in relation to one another. This ability to construct spatial maps in the brain is the basis […]
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Intestinal Blastocystis is linked to healthier diets and more favorable cardiometabolic outcomes in 56,989 individuals from 32 countries
Diet affects our health by influencing body fat and the risk of developing heart and metabolic diseases. The gut microbiome, which includes various microorganisms living in our intestines, plays a crucial role in this diet-health connection. While much research has focused on gut bacteria, the role of other microorganisms, like Blastocystis, hasn’t been studied as […]
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Andersen Receives Prize for Outstanding Achievements in Neurological Research
Richard Andersen, the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience and director and Leadership Chair of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center at Caltech, has been awarded the 2024 International Prize for Translational Neuroscience of the Gertrud Reemtsma Foundation. The Gertrud Reemtsma Foundation supports and recognizes outstanding achievements in basic neurological research. Andersen shares […]
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Beetles Conquered Earth by Evolving Their Own Biochemical Laboratory
As organisms diversified on planet Earth, some branches of the tree of life became exceptionally diverse, others far less so. Still others went extinct. Why evolution favored certain groups over others is a long-standing question in evolutionary science. Beetles are the poster child of evolutionary success: about 400,000 species are known—about a quarter of all […]
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TCCI Announces A Milestone of MindD Program: First Chinese EEG Dataset Published in Scientific Data, A Nature Portfolio Journal
At the forefront of neuroscience, EEG technology is gradually uncovering the mysteries of how the brain processes language. While EEG datasets using non-Chinese corpuses as stimuli are relatively comprehensive, there is a notable absence of EEG datasets stimulated by Chinese corpuses. This gap constrains research on the language representation mechanism of the human brain in […]
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TCCI lead author on Nature Review Bioengineering paper: Translation of Neurotechnologies
Neurotechnologies are tools that combine engineering and brain science to create devices that help connect the brain to the outside world. Since the early 2000s, these technologies have been widely discussed in scientific studies and popular media because they are exciting and promising. They have the potential to improve lives in ways that drugs cannot. […]
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Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute (China) Organizes a Seminar on Brain Health Database Construction and Ethics of Science and Technology: How to Balance Scientific and Technological Advancement with Ethics?
On May 30th, 2024, the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute (China), Shanghai Mental Health Center and Brain Health Research Institute of National Medical Center for Mental Disease jointly held a seminar on “Brain Health Database Construction and Ethics of Science and Technology”. During the seminar, more than 30 renowned experts from the fields of mental […]