Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute – Change perception, change your world | Chen Institute

Viruses are nature’s Trojan horses: They gain entrance to cells, smuggle in their genetic material, and use the cell’s own machinery to replicate. For decades, scientists have studied how to repurpose these invaders to deliver therapeutics for treating disease and tools for studying cells. Researchers in the lab of Viviana Gradinaru, professor of neuroscience and […]

Dean Mobbs, assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience and Chen Scholar at Caltech explains the brain circuitry that is causing many of us to feel heightened anxiety during the coronavirus pandemic. He calls the coronavirus an “invisible threat” and says that it causes us to seek out information on media sites about how to prevent it, […]

It has long been the belief that there are two types of observational learning: imitation and emulation. Research led by Caroline Charpentier, a postdoctoral scholar in neuroscience at Caltech, now shows how the brain chooses between the two neural systems responsible for each of these kinds of learning. The study, which appears in the journal Neuron, […]

The microscopic populations of bacteria in our intestines are, in some ways, just like us: They live in communities, eat, work, reproduce, and eventually die. Some live in harmony with our bodies but others don’t, putting us at increased risk for a variety of diseases. Now, Caltech researchers in the laboratory of Sarkis Mazmanian, Luis B. […]

Researchers in the lab of Viviana Gradinaru, professor of neuroscience and biological engineering, Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator and director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience at the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech, may have discovered a link between neurons in the gut and Parkinson’s Disease, a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder, impairing […]