Neuroscience News

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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