Knight Initiative News

The snakes’ unique feeding behavior offers new clues about the gut-brain axis—and hints of a potential weight-loss drug with fewer side effects than GLP-1 drugs

Aging causes changes in gut bacteria in mice, hampering communication between the intestines and the brain—but restoring this connection helped old mice form memories as well as young animals

Knight Initiative scientists tracked every moment of the life of the African turquoise killifish, showing that behavior alone can forecast whether an animal will live a long or short life

Neuroscientists studying inflammation and age-related brain decline engineered a protein that spurs the growth of new neurons in aging mice

A brain region specialized for recognizing text is smaller or absent in kids with dyslexia, but tutoring partly closes the gap

In stroke patients with aphasia, the brain spends too little time processing ambiguous sounds, researchers find, suggesting new targets for precision therapies

Wu Tsai Neuro researcher Vinod Menon and colleagues showed that children with math learning disabilities exhibit distinct brain activity patterns—insights that could pave the way for innovative support strategies

Different genes linked to autism can lead to the same symptoms and molecular pathways, according to a Wu Tsai Neuro Big Ideas-funded collaboration between the Pasca Lab and UCLA Health researchers

Proteins that start life inside neurons build up faster in old age and spread to other brain cells—a potential source of neurological mischief

Neuroscientists may have figured out the biochemical basis of why we value something more if we’ve put sweat equity into it

The database of lysosomal proteins is already helping researchers study how brain cells’ waste and recycling systems work—or don’t—in Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases

A new study suggests that there may have been evolutionary advantages from changes to genes also associated with autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia

Join us as we look back on some of the key studies we covered here at Wu Tsai Neuro and the Knight Initiative in 2025 to give a (very partial) overview of the impact of our community’s research efforts this past year

Wu Tsai Neuro researchers reprogrammed fruit fly brain development and behavior using new discoveries about how attractive and repulsive molecules build neural circuits

Neuroradiologist Raag Airan and his lab have found a non-invasive, drug-free method to help clean the brain, reduce inflammation, and treat disease—and with Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience support, they plan to test it in people soon.

In a clinical trial of a wireless retinal prosthesis, Wu Tsai Neuro affiliate Daniel Palanker and colleagues found that people with advanced macular degeneration regained enough vision to read books and subway signs.

A new study led by Wu Tsai Neuro Faculty Scholar Laura Gwilliams maps how we simultaneously process different words.

Premature babies who heard recordings of their mothers reading to them had more mature white matter in a key language area of the brain, Wu Tsai Neuro affiliate Heidi Feldman and colleagues found.

Studying mice of different ages, Stanford scientists and colleagues found that neurons involved in spatial memory become less reliable later in life.

What could make a promising approach to psychiatry and brain research even better? A solid beat.