Knight Initiative News

Jennifer Cochran, whose research focuses on development of new technologies for high-throughput protein analysis and engineering, succeeds Norbert Pelc.

Stanford researchers used advanced lab technologies to show, in mice, that symptoms of autism can be countered by reducing the ratio of excitatory to inhibitory neuronal firing in the forebrain.

A new study, conducted by Stanford psychiatrist, neuroscientist and inventor Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, and colleagues, suggests that key features of autism reflect an imbalance in signaling from two kinds of neurons in a portion of the forebrain.

Stanford investigators used high-throughput analysis to link inflammation to chronic fatigue syndrome, a difficult-to-diagnose disease with no known cure.

A new study led by Stanford chronic fatigue syndrome expert Jose Montoya, MD, has linked chronic fatigue syndrome to variations in 17 immune-system signaling proteins, or cytokines, whose concentrations in the blood correlate with the disease’s severity.

A tiny set of nerve cells in a male mouse’s brain activates aggression. But a new Stanford study shows that the male’s susceptibility to this activation depends on whether it has been housed with other mice or in isolation.

Male mice are naturally territorial. In the wild or in the lab, they attack other male mice even if plenty of room, food and females are available. This behavior is under the control of a small nerve circuit in the male mouse’s brain; disabling the circui

A Stanford team found that amyloid beta did not form into the plaques and fibrils characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease when in the presence of cathelicidin. Instead, the results indicate the two compounds form a stable non-toxic complex.

Using neuroscience to help determine the best treatment plans for patients with psychiatric conditions — everything from depression to anxiety to bipolar disorder — is a growing area of research in a field that is in desperately in need of better treatmen

Legal and illegal drugs are killing more people than AIDS ever did, yet the nation’s drug policies are based on unproven assumptions about addiction. Neuroscience could help shape more effective policies and save lives.

Addiction, like riding a bike, is a learned behavioral pattern you don’t unlearn even if you haven’t performed it for decades. Your brain’s semi-permanently hot-wired reward system has to be stripped down, reordered, and re-insulated again.

New technologies and new hypotheses have generated a growing pile of evidence that there are inherent differences in how men’s and women’s brains are wired and how they work.

Ever wish you were one of those people who could quickly memorize the order of all the cards in a deck? You can be, according to researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine and from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior in the Nethe

One rainy day in October 2007, Dennis Degray was taking out the trash when he slipped, fell and landed on his chin. He severely injured his spinal cord, becoming paralyzed from the neck down. “I’ve got nothing going on below the collarbones,” he says.

The cognitive differences between men and women

Stanford researcher Carolyn Rodriguez, MD, PhD, was the first to explore ketamine as a treatment for OCD.

A Stanford psychiatrist is researching the effects of ketamine on the brains of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoping to determine why, in studies, the drug has provided relief from symptoms.

As research shows that the hallucinogen is a potentially powerful treatment for intractable mental disorders, and academics continue to debate its safety, private clinics across the country offer the drug to patients now.

Today, most of the care for dementia patients — 83 percent — is provided by unpaid family members, two-thirds of whom are women. And the responsibility of providing care to the growing number of patients with dementia expected over the next 20 years will

With the publication of his latest book, Robert Sapolsky tackles the best and worst of human behavior and the nature of justice in the absence of free will.