October 2017

How do our brains represent the most basic of social cues, like whether a member of our species is male or female? This is a question two labs have been asking in mice, and they’ve employed some ground-breaking methods to do so. One lab, the Anderson lab from Caltech, published their results on October 19th

“I think we ought to integrate the maps of the brain, the dynamics of the brain, and the ability to control the brain into single coherent datasets” ~ Ed Boyden, MIT Near the end of 2015, Dr. Ed Boyden of MIT Media lab, McGovern Institute, and Synthetic Neurobiology Group, was awarded the Breakthrough Prize in

A mouse’s ability to differentiate male mice from female mice results from neural circuits that are hardwired in the hypothalamus of the brain, or at least that’s what neuroscientists thought. Because the hypothalamus is an evolutionarily ancient structure, and is also involved in instinctive behaviors like feeding, mating and aggression are considered innate behaviors in

September went by way too quickly, but at least there was plenty of great neural circuit research published in September to read. Congrats to all the authors! There are very interesting papers on social behavior and female aggression, and on dopamine neurons in disease and locomotion, plus many others! 1. Gating of social reward by