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May 2019                                                          View this email in your browser

Research Discoveries 

 

Gene therapy restores vision in blind mice

The Isacoff and Flannery labs have restored functional vision in mice with retinitis pigmentosa — a leading cause of inherited blindness in humans. The team took advantage of the fact that retinal degeneration typically affects photoreceptor cells that detect light, but not downstream cells, such as retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). They inserted a gene for a light-sensitive receptor normally found in photoreceptors into RGCs, giving them ability to detect light. This new approach holds promise for patients with inherited or age-related retinal degeneration, and Isacoff and Flannery are raising funds to begin gene therapy trials in humans in the next three years. Read the story in Berkeley News and the paper in Nature Communications.

Image by John Flannery. Injection of a modified virus carrying an opsin gene into the eye restored vision in blind mice. 


Looking beyond the face to read emotions


Much of the research on how people recognize the emotional states of others has focused on facial expressions and body language, but a new study from the Whitney lab has revealed that the surrounding context is just as important for identifying emotions. The researchers developed a method to track how subjects rated the emotions of actors or people in natural settings with their faces blurred in muted videos, and found that the background context that remained was both necessary and sufficient for accurate recognition of emotions. This could have implications for the study of disorders where emotional recognition is impaired, such as autism and schizophrenia. Read the story in Berkeley News and the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Image by Jeffrey Zhang.

Discovering drivers in hippocampal circuits


In research featured on the March cover of Nature Neuroscience, the Foster lab showed that the CA3 area of the hippocampus plays a dominant role in driving the responses of place cells in the CA1 area of the hippocampus that are activated when an animal is in a particular location. These cells and the hippocampus in general are critical for spatial learning and memory. The researchers revealed the importance of CA3 inputs on CA1 using optogenetics to acutely silence CA3 neurons. Read the publication.


Cover courtesy of David Foster. Image: Zeinab Vessal. Cover Design: Marina Corral Spence.
 

Identification of subnetworks of somatostatin neurons in sensory processing


In order to interpret the world around us, our cortex integrates “bottom-up” information from our sensory organs with “top-down” information from other areas of the brain. In a new study published in eLife, the Adesnik and Ngai labs and their collaborators have identified two subsets of neurons that express the same neurotransmitter, somatostatin, but function in different subnetworks related to either bottom-up or top-down processing in the somatosensory cortex. Read our Q&A with first author and PhD Program alum Alex Naka to learn more.

A dye-filled Martinotti cell, one type of somatostatin neuron studied in the paper. Image courtesy of Alex Naka.

PhD Program News

 

Congratulations to our 2019 graduates!

Graduates Jonathan Jui (left) and Shariq Mobin (right) are pictured with PhD Program Director Michael Silver (center). Not pictured: Kata Slama.

Read our Q&A with the graduates to learn about their biggest discoveries, future plans, and words of advice.

News

 

Why dogs excel at smell


Research from the Jacobs lab about why dogs are so good at detecting and tracking odors was featured in an episode of KQED Science’s Deep Look series. Watch the video here.

Image by Pezibear from Pixabay 
 

Berkeley Neuroscience members merge art and science


Assistant Professor Teresa Puthussery and PhD Program student Irene Grossrubatscher exhibited their work at the Vision+Light: Processing Perception exhibit, which celebrates the intersection of art and science. Read more…



Image by Teresa Puthussery.

 

Why and how to get more sleep


Professor Matthew Walker discusses the importance of getting more sleep and shares tips on how to actually do it in an interview with NPR and a TED talk.




Image by Pettycon from Pixabay 

Alumni Profiles


Liberty Hamilton and Alex Huth were dating when they entered the Neuroscience PhD Program together in 2008. Now married, they are both faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin!
 

Liberty Hamilton eavesdrops on how the human brain processes natural sounds
 

“Something we can really add to the field is being able to understand at a much higher level how sounds become meaningful words and concepts.”
 
As an Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders and Neurology at UT Austin, Liberty Hamilton uses electrocorticography to record from the cerebral cortex of patients undergoing epilepsy surgery to study how the brain processes and produces natural sounds like language. In our Q&A, Hamilton talks about her research, experiences working with patients, and how being a faculty member makes her appreciate what went on behind the scenes in the PhD Program. Read our full profile…

Letting the data speak for itself: Alex Huth models language representation in the brain

 
“If you can get enough hours of data, enough data points, then we can let the data tell us what kind of features are important, instead of being forced to guess.”

As an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Neuroscience at UT Austin, Alex Huth combines approaches from neuroscience, computer science, mathematics, and linguistics to build complex models of how language and meaning is represented in the brain, based on large amounts of fMRI data that he gathers as subjects listen to natural language. In our Q&A, Huth talks about how Star Trek sparked his interest in neuroscience, his experiences as a new faculty member, and the accepting community he found in the PhD Program. Read our full profile…

Honors and Awards

 

Scott elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences


Kristin Scott, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Scott studies taste detection in fruit flies to understand how sensory processing can give rise to specific behaviors. Read more about this honor.

 

Banks elected to National Academy of Sciences


Martin Banks, Professor of Optometry and Vision Science, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Banks studies visual space perception and how multiple sensory modalities are combined, and applies his findings to emerging virtual technologies. Read more...

Bateup appointed as Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator


Helen Bateup, Assistant Professor of Neurobiology, was appointed as a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. Her research focuses on the molecular basis of synapse and circuit changes associated with epilepsy and autism. Read more about this appointment.

Wilbrecht wins Pilot Award from SFARI


Linda Wilbrecht, Associate Professor of Psychology, and her lab won a Winter 2019 Pilot Award from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, for a project entitled: “The influence of autism risk genes on reinforcement learning and corticostriatal circuit development.” Read more...
 

Puthussery wins Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of GSIs


Teresa Puthussery, Assistant Professor of Optometry and Vision Science, has won a 2019 Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs). The annual award honors Berkeley faculty who have provided exceptional mentorship in teaching to their GSIs. Read more...
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