News
Chris Donnelly and colleagues will work with the Mayo Clinic-Jacksonville and MIT in a five-year, $9M effort to identify molecular and genetic mechanisms that cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Learn More
Rebecca Thurston and colleagues have found connections between childhood sexual abuse or adult sexual assault and cognitive decline, dementia and stroke during aging. Learn More
The Brain Institute is offering up to $25,000 for one year for basic science research projects in dementia, in keeping with its Assault on Alzheimer’s initiative. Learn More
A study reported in PNAS describes how decoding the neural signals of movement in high-stakes scenarios could help advance the field of neuroprosthetics operated under brain control. Learn More
Neurologist David Lacomis is co-principal investigator on a $10M NIH grant to Carnegie Mellon to test the novel Stentrode in patients paralyzed by ALS or stroke. Learn More
Lead author Tharick Pascoal, MD, PhD, and colleagues show that activation of microglial cells is key to the spread of pathologically misfolded proteins in the brain. Learn More
Eric Anderson, Uday Pandey and colleagues showed that repeated head trauma leads to protein build-up that could explain the higher incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in football players. Learn More
Work by David Levinthal, MD, PhD, and colleagues suggests that stress disrupts vagal pathways, thus hindering digestion and allowing ulcer-inducing bacteria to damage the stomach. Learn More
Jose-Alain Sahel and colleagues report in Nature Medicine how they added light-sensitive proteins to the man’s retina, which when paired with high-tech goggles gave him a blurry view of objects. Learn More
In Science, bioengineers describe how adding artificial tactile perception with a brain-controlled robotic arm cut in half the amount of time it took to grasp and move objects. Learn More
“The beauty of this treatment is in its wide therapeutic window,” says senior author Xiaoming Hu in the Department of Neurology. Learn More
A global study headed by Sherry Chou found that half the patients had acute encephalopathy, and that pre-existing neurological conditions like migraines or dementia doubled the risk. Learn More
An international collaboration led by Udai Pandey reports in Nature Communications the discovery that mutations in the protein GEMIN5 cause developmental delay and loss of coordination. Learn More
Ilyas Kamboh and colleagues will look for genetic underpinnings of plaques and tangles that form due to abnormal accumulation of amyloid-beta and tau proteins. Learn More
Maria Jalbrzikowski reports in JAMA Psychiatry that the thinning was most pronounced in several temporal and frontal regions of the brain. Learn More
Sherry Chou, who heads the Global Consortium Study of Neurologic Dysfunction in COVID-19, tells USNews & World Report about findings in a study of more than 3,700 patients in 13 countries. Learn More
Pitt scientists found more VGLUT in dopamine neurons of female fruit flies, rodents and human beings than in males, correlating with older women's lower incidence of neuron loss. Learn More
The Stauffer group reports in Nature Neuroscience a first step to understanding how value and reward-probability distributions are coded in the brain. Learn More
Page B. Pennell, MD, whose research focus is on patients with epilepsy, comes to Pitt from Harvard Medical School and will start July 1. Learn More
A $1M gift from the Tull Family Foundation aims to enhance multidisciplinary collaboration in neuroscience, imaging and treatment. Learn More