News

Chuck Phillips of the Corey lab shares new research on the biophysics of how we hear—providing insight on the molecular mechanisms by which the ion channel protein TMC1, found on hair cells in the inner ear, moves in response to force and works to convert the mechanical energy of sound into electrical signals that the brain can understand.

New research reveals that acute and chronic insults both reshape how pain signals are sent to the brain, but through distinct mechanisms. By using long-term calcium imaging in mice, researchers from the Woolf lab tracked the same spinal cord neurons over time and found that acute pain temporarily increases sensitivity, while chronic nerve injury recruits a previously ‘silent’ group of neurons – offering a potential key to understanding chronic pain.

Bryan Baxter and Dara Manoach share a new study on the brain basis of motor learning. When learning a typing task, epilepsy patients show higher rates of “hippocampal ripples”--an electrical activity pattern in the brain associated with memory formation--during brief rest breaks than during the typing itself. These ‘offline’ ripples predict gains in speed, suggesting that ripples contribute to motor learning during wakeful rest.

In the latest episode of the "Harvard Thinking" podscast, host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with Venki Murthy, Margaret O’Connor, and Daniel Schacter about the science of memory — and what we can do to remember better.

Exposure to light at night raises cardiovascular disease risk by up to 50 percent over sleeping in the dark, new research from Andrew J.K. Phillips, Sean W. Cain (Flinders University) and colleagues, co-first authors Daniel P. Windred (Flinders University) and Angus C. Burns (Harvard) shows. However, this risk isn’t from lack of sleep, but from disruption of the body’s master biological clock, the circadian rhythm.

Round up of awards and honors earned by the HBI community.