Neuroscience News

Millions of people are living with paralysis in the United States alone. Sometimes their paralysis comes gradually, as occurs in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease. Sometimes it arrives suddenly, as it did for Dennis Degray.

In a Stanford-led research report, three participants with movement impairment controlled an onscreen cursor simply by imagining their own hand movements.

A new organic artificial synapse made by Stanford researchers could support computers that better recreate the way the human brain processes information. It could also lead to improvements in brain-machine technologies.

Enkephalins are peptides that are produced in response to certain stimuli — such as stress, fear or pain — that also have potent painkilling properties.

The Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute is elevating three research programs to become the flagship Big Ideas collaborations focusing on brain rejuvenation, neurotechnology and decision-making.

The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub has announced 19 Stanford faculty among its first cohort of 47 investigators from Bay Area university collaborators. These investigators will work toward curing, preventing and managing every disease.

Lack of sleep definitely affects your performance the next day, and probably for a longer period of time than you might expect, according to a new study.

The Stanford institute’s grant program funds projects that support innovative clinical and translational research on maternal and child health.

Karl Deisseroth is one of two recipients of the 2016 Harvey Prize in Human Health, which is being awarded for the development of optogenetics.

A substance called A-beta, is strongly and broadly believed to play a major role in the Alzheimer’s disease’s pathology.

Judging from the very terms used to designate brain research — neuroscience, neurology, neurobiology — you might figure nerve cells (or neurons) are the only cells in the brain worth knowing about or, the only cells resident in that organ.

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.