Knight Initiative News

A new Stanford Neurosciences Institute initiative called the NeuroFab, has a specific goal of helping engineers and neuroscientists speak to each other and overcome some of those cultural differences.

New tools for probing the inner workings of neurons developed through an initiative of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute will help scientists understand and heal the brain.

All too often, you read of a basic-research advance that promises to lead to new therapies — and then you never hear about it again. But this time there’s some follow-up to report on the multiple-sclerosis therapy front.

A new study published in Cerebral Cortex suggested that spontaneous improvisation — not only can be improved by training, but also appears to correspond to a particular state of brain activity characterized by the suppression of the very brain centers see

People disabled by a stroke demonstrated substantial recovery long after the event when modified adult stem cells were injected into their brains.

Stanford psychiatrist-bioengineer-neuroscientist-inventor Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, has pioneered two separate technologies that, while quite different from one another, pose the prospect of working together to enable new strides in brain research.

To find out what time of day is best for learning, undergraduate Meagan Shinbashi spent late nights in the lab giving memory tests to mice.

What happens when two Nobel Laureates get talking? They hatch a crazy plan to take teeny tiny diamonds from crude oil and – presto change-o – turn them into a novel way of imaging molecules and structures in the brain.

Inconsistency among countries about what constitutes a "standard drink" and definitions of low-risk drinking hampers international research and confuses people attempting to drink responsibly.

Over the past decade, a team led by two Stanford-SLAC faculty members has found potential roles for diamondoids in improving electron microscope images, assembling materials and printing circuits on computer chips.

When rats were trained to choose between high- and low-risk options while a circuit in their brains was monitored and manipulated, a specific signal in that circuit determined their choice.

How neuroscience could determine your mental health treatment

Now, in a study published in Neuron, Stanford neuroscientist Ivan Soltesz, PhD, and his colleagues may have shown a way to enhance marijuana’s medical virtues by countering some of its troubling side effects.

Biochemist Peter Kim and bioengineer Scott Delp have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Kim is now one of only 20 people who are members of all three national academies.

Sighing is a long, deep involuntary inhalation accompanying sensations of yearning, sadness, relief, boredom, exhaustion, or exasperation. Fewer of us know that the typical person also sighs spontaneously about every five minutes or so.

As director of Stanford Bio-X, Carla Shatz, PhD, not only supports campus-wide interdisciplinary research efforts, but her own research serves as an example of how teams can work in collaboration.

Short flashes of light at night are more effective than using continuous light as therapy to prevent disruptions in people’s circadian rhythms, according to researchers.

Brain scientists have devised an algorithm that spontaneously decodes human conscious thought at the speed of experience.

About 400,000 people in the United States are affected by multiple sclerosis (often referred to by the acronym MS), an autoimmune disorder in which rogue immune cells attack the insulating layer surrounding many nerve cells in the central nervous system.

Now we can start asking interesting questions about impulse control and gambling.