Latest

CalTech

Featured Neuroscience Neuroscience Videos Open Neuroscience Articles

·August 25, 2021·6 min read

Mice Can Learn Much Faster than Previously Thought

Mice learn 1,000 times faster when faced with unfamiliar environment tasks than when learning simple, yet unnatural tasks.

Featured Neuroscience

·July 1, 2021·5 min read

Gut Microbiome Affects a Specific Set of Neurons Responsible For Proper Social Function

Researchers identified the gut bacteria E. faecalis as a mediator of social behavior and corticosterone levels in mice.

This is a painting by Joseph Schillinger

Featured Neuroscience

·June 16, 2021·6 min read

Computers Predict People’s Tastes in Art

Artificial intelligence technology is able to break down a painting's visual attributes. Trained by data from online users, the deep convolutional neural network was accurately able to predict an individual's taste in art.

Featured Neuroscience

·March 22, 2021·8 min read

Reading Minds With Ultrasound

Focused ultrasound allowed researchers to record and monitor brain activity in a non-invasive way. The technology allowed the researchers to predict movement.

This is a cartoon of researchers piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of a head

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·January 31, 2021·2 min read

What is Personality?

A new theoretical study proposes new models outlining the relationship between personality, genes, and behaviors. Researchers also propose a method to discover where personality resides in the brain, and how it relates to other psychological functions including memory and emotion.

This shows a heart with prison bars and a brain behind it

Featured Neuroscience

·December 27, 2020·6 min read

Love and Hate in the Brain

Activity in the medial preoptic area tilts the mouse brain toward love and affection, while activity in the ventromedial hypothalamus is associated with more aggressive or hateful acts.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·October 4, 2020·5 min read

How Aggression Leads to More Aggression

Hard wired neural circuits in mice that govern aggression are strengthened following victories in aggressive encounters. Synapses in the hypothalamus show signs of LTP following aggression training.

Featured Neuroscience

·September 19, 2020·6 min read

How Fear Persists in the Mouse Brain

When a mouse senses a threat, neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus become activated and remain active for ten seconds after the threat is removed. Fear responses could be induced by artificially stimulating these neurons. Artificially silencing the neurons reduced fear behavior.

Featured Neuroscience Neuroscience Videos

·June 25, 2020·5 min read

‘Where are my keys?’ and other memory-based choices probed in the brain

Study identifies a different set of individual neurons in the medial frontal cortex that is responsible for memory-based decision making. The findings have implications for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, and other disorders associated with problems in cognitive flexibility.

Featured Neuroscience

·March 27, 2020·5 min read

Watch and learn: How the brain gains knowledge through observation

The brain chooses between two neural systems responsible for emulation learning and imitation learning. Study reveals how the brain chooses which strategy to employ when faced with an observational learning task.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·February 18, 2020·5 min read

Parkinson’s biomarker may originate in gut

Using mouse models, researchers seeded alpha-synuclein aggregates in gut neurons and discovered the clumps can travel to neurons in the brain.

This shows cells with the male and female symbols

Featured Neuroscience

·October 17, 2019·4 min read

Male and female mice have different brain cells

Study identifies rare brain cell types that are unique to male mice, and others that are unique to females. The cells were discovered in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that governs both aggression and mating behaviors.