Featured Story:
Unveiling the True Colors of the ‘Dysfunctome’
April 15, 2024
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.
Community Stories
March 22, 2024
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.
Original article in: Nature >
March 8, 2024
Thyroid signaling plays a central role in metabolism. Ralph Lawton and Daniel Hochbaum of the Sabatini Lab share new research revealing it may regulate human behavior and other important components of health as well.
Original article in: PNAS >
February 16, 2024
One cell, the “midget retinal ganglion cell,” carries the vast majority of visual information from the eye to the brain in humans. It has been thought to be a primate-specific innovation, making it impossible to study in accessible model systems. Josh Sanes shares how, using molecular comparison of retinas from 17 vertebrate species, researchers from his team and that of former postdoc Karthik Shekhar, were able to trace back through evolution and identify mouse orthologues of midget cells.
Original article in: Nature >
February 7, 2024
Yichun He and Hailing Shi share new work from labs of Jia Liu and Xiao Wang, on the creation of publicly accessible spatial atlas of the mouse brain with unprecedented level of detail—featuring an analysis of over one million individual cells that pinpointed approximately 230 unique molecular cell types and delineated 106 distinct molecular tissue regions.
Original article in: Nature >
In the News
March 27, 2024
Preliminary results of a first-in-human trial for a new CAR T-based treatment targeting two different sites on glioblastoma tumors result in dramatic, but transient, reductions in tumor size.
Original article in: New England Journal of Medicine >
March 27, 2024
Topiramate — an antiseizure medication prescribed to treat epilepsy as well as migraines and bipolar disorder — does not appear to increase the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among children exposed to it prenatally, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Original article in: New England Journal of Medicine >
March 27, 2024
A simple skin biopsy test has shown a high accuracy rate in detecting an abnormal form of alpha-synuclein, the pathological hallmark of Parkinson’s disease, according to neurologists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Original article in: American Medical Association >
Awards & Honors
March 27, 2024
Round up of awards and honors earned by the HBI community.
March 14, 2024
Haim Sompolinsky, a professor in residence in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Department of Physics and a member of the Center for Brain Science, has received the Brain Prize for his pioneering contributions to computational and theoretical neuroscience.
Banner Image:
Spiral ganglion neuron density. Image courtesy of Isle Bastille (Lab of Lisa Goodrich, Harvard Medical School).