Recent news about neuroscience and the brain from across Columbia.
A 20-month-old girl suffering from a rare neurodegenerative disease was diagnosed and successfully treated in a case that exemplifies the potential of precision medicine.
Kelley Remole has been interested in science since she was a child. In high school, she was drawn to astronomy and neuroscience, which she says involve “the biggest questions in science, what is our place in the universe and what makes us who we are.”
Larry Abbott, the William Bloor Professor in Neuroscience, Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, was a theoretical physicist until the late 1980s, when it struck him that it might take decades to see the fruits of his research. He hungered for a field of study where results and insights could come more quickly.
Valerie Purdie-Vaughns is an associate professor of psychology at the University, specializing in stereotypes and the experiences of marginalized groups in society, including minorities, the disabled, women in science, gays and lesbians, and ex-convicts.
Scott Small, director of Columbia’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, the Boris and Rose Katz Professor of Neurology, discusses what is known and what’s yet to be discovered, about the disease.
Yaakov Stern, a professor in the departments in Neurology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, is affiliated with the Sergievsky Center and the Taub Institute. His research centers on age-related changes in memory, and why similar patients may show more cognitive deficit than others.
Serge E. Przedborski, MD, PhD, an internationally recognized clinician-scientist in the neurobiology of disease, has been appointed the inaugural director of the Columbia Translational Neuroscience Initiative (CTNI).
Researchers at Columbia University and the University of Colorado at Boulder have found that expectations can drive changes in the brain, highlighting an important link between psychology and medicine.
Columbia University today announced the establishment of an interdisciplinary NeuroTechnology Center with a mission to develop advanced optical, electrical and computational technologies for the study of complex neurobiological systems.
Nicotine, no matter the source, may function as a gateway to marijuana and cocaine
Like conventional cigarettes, electronic cigarettes (or e-cigarettes) may function as a “gateway drug”—a drug that lowers the threshold for addiction to other substances, such as marijuana and cocaine—according to the 120th Shattuck lecture, presented to the Massachusetts Medical Society by Columbia researchers Denise and Eric Kandel and published today in the online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.