News

A hallmark of anorexia nervosa is the willful seeking and maintenance of a starvation state, potentially as a means to cope with stressful life experiences or trauma. Hakan Kucukdereli and Mark Andermann share their research on how they designed a virtual reality paradigm to study this phenomenon in mice.

Deep brain stimulation is a powerful therapeutic approach for severe brain circuit dysfunctions that can effectively alleviate the heterogeneous symptoms characteristic of Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, Tourette’s syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Barbara Hollunder (Lab of Andreas Horn) explains what invasive brain stimulation can teach us about the circuit architecture of the brain’s dysfunction — and which commonalities it shares with a prism.

The mind can wander and uncouple from the present experience of the body, but how does it snap back into the present? Jordan Farrell shares new research that points towards a brain circuit phenomenon that may explain this shift.

In a first, neuroscientists have created a microscopic “brain thesaurus” that reflects how the meaning of words is represented. Using a novel technology to record the activity from single neurons in the human brain, the team was also able to predict the meaning of words heard in real-time speech. From Ziv Williams and Colleagues, co-first authors Mohsen Jamali and Benjamin Grannan.

New research suggests intensive diet and lifestyle changes may not only forestall cognitive decline related to Alzheimer’s disease but possibly bring some improvement to those in early stages. From Steven Arnold, Rudolph Tanzi, and colleagues. Read more at the Harvard Gazette.

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