Neuroscience News

What does the term microdosing mean to you? If you’re a sports fan then maybe it makes you think of the cyclist Lance Armstrong and the furor surrounding his performance-enhancing EPO usage. Or if you’re clued in on drug development then perhaps you know it’s an approach used to examine the cellular-level response to drugs.

A new study co-authored by a University of Chicago neuroscientist identifies neural networks, particularly the areas of the brain that encode the colors we actually see. "We've been able to show where it happens in the visual pathway, which is relatively early," said Prof. Steven Shevell, a leading scholar of color and brightness perception. "It's like a road map that shows where to look for the neural circuits that cause the transition from the earliest neural representations of the physical world to our mental world."

“Pay attention!” We’ve heard that demand—maybe not in so many words—from everyone from parents, teachers, and bosses to the ad hucksters that permeate every environment. But just what exactly does “attention” mean?

The Bionic Breast Project is an interdisciplinary research program applying bionic technologies to restore post-mastectomy breast function. Using some of the concepts developed for the bionic hand, the researchers, including Sliman Bensmaia, PhD, James and Karen Frank Family Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, plan to embed a flexible sensor array under the skin of mastectomy patients.

All of us age, and as we do, myelin, the protective covering around the nerve cells in our brain, starts to deteriorate. This is like losing the insulation around an electrical wire. It causes nerve impulses to slow or even stop, and affects a range of bodily functions from thinking, memory, and behavior to balance and coordination. But this does not have to be the case.