ANNOUNCEMENTS
2024 Beauty of the Brain Image Contest
We are excited to announce the winners of the 2024 Beauty of the Brain image contest! This year we received 31 submissions, of which five were selected as winners. Thank you to all who took the time to send us your images and to the 147 people who voted for their favorites. A gallery of this year’s submissions can be found here. Full image descriptions are visible if you click on the “I” information symbol on the corner of the image.
The winning images were:
Tangled Tubules
Mara Casebeer,
Lab of Dan Needleman, Harvard University
A Sparkling Spot
Keunjung Heo,
Lab of Clifford Woolf, Boston Children’s Hospital
Connect to Hear: Afferent and Efferent Neurons in the Ear
Yi-Chia Huang,
Lab of Lisa Goodrich, Harvard Medical School
Stairway to Heaven: The Bundle of a Human Stem-Cell Derived Hair Cell
Carl Nist-Lund
Lab of Karl Koehler, Boston Children’s Hospital
Follow Your Heart, But Take Your Brain With You
Encarnacion Torres Jimenez
Lab of Victor Navarro, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Community Stories
Our recent study uncovers how SKA2, a protein regulating stress-related signaling, interacts with the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) to maintain balance in the brain’s stress response. By highlighting altered SKA2 expression in bipolar disorder, this work offers new insights into the molecular underpinnings of stress-related psychiatric conditions and potential pathways for therapeutic intervention.
How do pediatric brain tumors mimic normal brain development, and how can this be leveraged for therapies? Ilon Liu, Mariella Filbin and colleagues find that a specific brain tumor type resembles GABAergic interneuron development, and with this knowledge they identify novel targets against this lethal tumor.
Sophie Barton shares new research investigating how humans may have unwittingly altered the brain morphology of domestic dogs through selective breeding for head shape. Dogs with extreme head shapes show widespread reductions in gray matter volume across the brain.
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