Schizophrenia is a debilitating developmental illness characterized by multiple symptoms including hallucinations, delusions and social withdrawal. Although drugs are available to treat some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, their profound…
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder. AD destroys neurons, causing memory loss, confusion and impaired judgment. It is characterized by the formation of two pathological features,…
A hallmark feature of our brains is their enormous capacity for information storage and learning. In neuronal circuits, information is stored through long-term changes in the efficacy and gain of…
The size and shape of every part of the brain are determined by how much the neuronal progenitor cells divide during embryogenesis. In nematodes, we identified a gene that is…
Fragile X syndrome is the most common form of human mental retardation and the single largest known cause of autism. One prominent manifestation of the disease is an alteration in…
Epilepsy is a brain disorder of abnormally increased brain excitability that leads to seizures. A person is considered to have epilepsy when he or she has two or more unprovoked…
The mammalian superior colliculus (SC) is a subcortical structure that integrates visual and other sensory information and controls eye and head movements to orient the animal towards novel sensory stimuli.…
Understanding how nerve cells are wired together into functional circuits is essential to understanding how the brain works. Traditional anatomical techniques can reveal the structure of neuronal circuits. However, determining…
Parkinson’s disease (PD), a severely debilitating adult-onset neurodegenerative condition, is characterized by a substantial depletion of a subset of midbrain dopamine neurons (mDA). This loss of mDA accounts for most…
Humans and other advanced animals are not born with a built in library of meaningfulcategories, such as “tables” and “chairs,” which we are preprogrammed to recognize. Insteadwe learn to recognize…
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