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

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 […]

A major goal of neuroscience is understanding how all of the brain’s neurons know how to connect to each other to achieve optimum function. Scientists often study the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster because their brains are “hardwired” (meaning nearly identical). Now, Caltech researchers have determined how part of the fly’s visual system forms, an important piece in […]

Caltech researchers have made progress toward understanding the neurological basis of the heightened aggression that male Drosophila show toward one another after recent encounters with females. Their research shows that your brain takes recent experiences into account when coordinating your responses to external stimuli.   The study was conducted in the laboratory of David Anderson, Seymour Benzer Professor of […]