Neuroscience News

Prof. Marlene Cohen’s research uses vision as a means to study how signals about the world get transformed in the brain to produce behavior.

Yamuna Krishnan, professor of chemistry, received the Pioneer Award, which entails $3.5 million of research funding over five years for an ambitious new research direction to map organelles electrochemically. The Pioneer Award will enable Krishnan to explore previously uncharted spaces inside cells, using an unorthodox method she pioneered: making tiny machines out of DNA.

Raymond Roos, MD, the Marjorie and Robert E. Straus, Professor in Neurologic Science, will partner with Paschalis Kratsios, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neurobiology, to direct the Center for Motor Neuron Disease (CMND).

The brain expertly enhances some signals and filters out others so that we can ignore distractions and focus on the most important details. How does the brain accomplish these feats of focus? In recent research at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., we have illuminated a new answer to this question.

While Alzheimer’s disease usually affects people over the age of 65, it can also affect people in their 40s, 50s and early 60s. When it does, the condition is known as younger-onset or early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Knowing how challenging it can be to quit smoking, Andrea King, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, wanted to find a treatment that could help smokers to quit, particularly those who would describe themselves as heavy drinkers.