Knight Initiative News

Astrocytes, the brain’s most abundant cells, are essential to the survival and healthy function of nerve cells. But aberrant astrocytes may be driving brain disorders.

Stanford researchers said they have identified the receptors to which opioid drugs bind to produce tolerance and increased sensitivity to pain, as well as a commercially available drug that limited those side effects in mice.

Stanford neuroscientist Ivan Soltesz, PhD, is a very serious researcher with a focus on the causes of, and treatments for, chronic epileptic seizures in children.

Epilepsy, a pattern of recurrent seizures, affects 1 in 26 people over their lifetime. So-called absence epilepsy (also called petit mal seizures) is most common among children ages 6 to 15 and accounts for about 1 in 20 epilepsy cases.

Stanford researchers used a rodent model to discover that shifting the firing pattern of a particular set of brain cells is all it takes to initiate, or to terminate, an absence seizure.

It turns out that tiny little bits of our brains are constantly cycling in and out of sleep, and when those few cells are down, they miss things. What’s more, when neurons are specifically paying attention, they spend less time in the sleepy part of the c

New research finds that small regions of the brain cycle in and out of sleep, even when awake. The cycles shift toward “awake” when that part of the brain pays attention to a task.

The U.S. surgeon general released a landmark report this month calling for “a cultural shift in how we think about addiction.” The report also states that addiction is a chronic illness, not a moral failing.

Like a computer’s RAM, working memory serves as a buffer where information, derived from the senses or retrieved from long-term memory, can be temporarily placed so the conscious brain can process it.

The amount of a neurotransmitter called GABA in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex predicted individuals’ ability to keep several things in mind simultaneously, researchers found.

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) will award the Julius Axelrod Prize to Robert Malenka, MD, PhD, of Stanford University School of Medicine. The Julius Axelrod Prize recognizes exceptional achievements in neuropharmacology or a related field and exemplar

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) will present its highest award, the Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience, to Ben Barres, PhD, of Stanford University, and Thomas Jessell, PhD, of Columbia University.

Tom Stoppard’s latest play, which tackles issues of neuroscience and consciousness – leading to its title, “The Hard Problem” – was followed by a panel discussion with scientists from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.

Congratulations are in order for entrepreneur/philanthropist Sean Parker, founder of the Parker Foundation; Ann Arvin, MD, who has dedicated her career to understanding infectious diseases in children; and attorney John Levin, chair of the Stanford Health

Nothing prevents great researchers from having great personalities.

Theo Palmer, associate professor of neurosurgery, has long sought to understand how genetic and environmental factors collide to shape brain function.

Stanford neuroscientist Leanne Williams, PhD, has focused her research career on how insights from brain science can help improve care for people with psychiatric conditions.

Big pharmaceutical companies have gradually abandoned their one time obsession with ridding Alzheimer’s patients’ brains of gummy extracellular deposits known as amyloid plaques (they’re composed of a protein called beta-amyloid) that characterize the dis

Stanford Neurosciences Institute member Xiaoke Chen is first recipient of the Firmenich Next Generation Fund to support his work to study the way our body's sense of self motivates behavior.

The Stanford recipients are among 88 scientists nationwide to receive Pioneer, New Innovator, Transformative Research and Early Independence awards through the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward program. The awards total about $127 million and are supported by