Join us in congratulating Dr. Justus Kebschull on winning the “MIND” Prize (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery). Dr. Kebschull’s lab will use a combination of next generation viral tools, cellular barcoding and high throughput sequencing to delineate the brain wide cerebellar connection at a single cell resolution.

Congratulations to Jeremias Sulam on receiving the NSF Career Award.

The novel genetic engineering approach, tested in mice and laboratory-grown nerve and light-receiving cells, will initially have research applications.

Biophotonics Imaging Technology (BIT) Lab, led by Prof. Xingde Li at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and lead author Dr. Ang Li, published a paper in Optica that reported their recent breakthrough in neuroimaging technology based on a scanning fiberscope: the implementation of a compact and lightweight fiberscope enabling dynamic two-photon neuroimaging in freely rotating and walking rodents.

The Kavli NDI lab of Dr. Richard Huganir published a paper in PNAS which found a biochemical regulation of AMPARs is specific to homeostatic synaptic plasticity while sparing Hebbian plasticity mechanisms.

Frandolig et al. show that the neuronal composition and circuit organization differs between two distinct sublayers in layer 6a. 

Johns Hopkins Director of Kavli NDI and the Department of Neuroscience, Dr. Richard Huganir, is being recognized for his role in understanding the molecular and biochemical underpinnings of “synaptic plasticity,” changes at synapses that are key to learning and memory formation. 

The lab of Professor of Neuroscience James Knierim in the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute published a paper in Science that discovered a new role of the Lateral Entorhinal Cortex (LEC)—one of the gateways of information into the hippocampal memory system.  

By studying the genome of a kind of octopus not known for its friendliness toward its peers, then testing its behavioral reaction to a popular mood-altering drug called MDMA or “ecstasy,” scientists say they have found preliminary evidence of an evolutionary link between the social behaviors of the sea creature and humans, species separated by 500 million years on the evolutionary tree.

Dr. Richard Huganir, a Johns Hopkins Department of Neuroscience faculty member since 1988, is the latest researcher to join the ranks of the Bloomberg Distinguished Professors, a group of interdisciplinary scholars at Hopkins who are working to address major world problems and teach the next generation.

The trend toward a quantitative, task based, understanding of medical images leads to the simple goal of answering “how many bits of information would one expect a medical image to contain about disease status?” Knowing the answer to this question could impact a clinician's decision of whether or not to order an imaging study, particularly in the case where it involves ionizing radiation. This quantity can be studied in terms of mutual information between disease status and anatomical form, and is the problem being tackled by Johns Hopkins Kavli NDI researchers, Daniel Tward and Michael Miller.

Kavli NDI associate Jeremy Nathans, with colleagues Chris Cho and Phillip Smallwood, address a series of open questions related to the regulation of mammalian CNS angiogenesis and blood-brain barrier maintenance. In their recent report in Neuron, they identify two proteins, Gpr124 and Reck, as essential cofactors for Wnt signaling that mediates vascularization of the mammalian brain and spinal cord.

For the first time, scientists have watched sleep transform the brain. The research confirms a longstanding theory about the value of sleep—and helps explain why sleep deprivation messes with our ability to remember. 

Michael Miller, Ph.D., has been selected as the next director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, effective July 1, 2017.

On May 19, 2017, the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute hosted actor, director, and science advocate Alan Alda. In his lecture, Alda shared insights on how empathy is crucial to successful communication, and how we can each improve on how we share science research.

Severson et al. report in Neuron the identification of a population of cells found in skin, Merkel cells, that percieve "active touch", which is the integration of motion combined with touch that allows us to navigate our external world.

Chiu et al. report in Neuron this week that GRASP1 functions in regulating in vivo synapse number, learning-dependent AMPAR synaptic incorporation, synaptic plasticity, and cognition. 

An exhaustive overview of the cerebellar nuclei from Justus Kebschull and collegues.

The Society for Neuroscience honored Prof. Richard Huganir with the Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience recognizing his contributions to the field.  

The vestibular system detects head motion to coordinate vital reflexes and provide our sense of balance and spatial orientation. 

The lab of Professor Kechen Zhang of the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and researchers from the JHU/Applied Physics Laboratory, including Kavli NDI steering committee member Grace Hwang, have a new paper in the journal Biological Cybernetics detailing a new theory relating the neural dynamics of memory in the brain to the autonomous control of robotic swarms. 

Kavli NDI Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Jonathan Ling, and colleagues developed a computational data mining resource, ASCOT, to determine how novel cell type-specific splicing variants are regulated across the nervous system.

The Knierim Lab of MBI and the LIMBS Lab of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (N. Cowan, PI) published a study in the journal Nature that showed how the brain translates movement information (e.g., speed and direction) into a position signal on the brain’s “cognitive map.”

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has substantially enhanced our ability to examine the brain anatomy and functions in neurodegenerative diseases. In Huntington's disease (HD), regional brain atrophy begins many years prior to the motor onset (during the "premanifest" period), but the spatiotemporal pattern of regional atrophy across the brain has not been fully characterized.

Oligodendrocyte generation in the adult CNS provides a means to adapt the properties of circuits to changes in life experience. Recent research by Hopkins Department of Neuroscience and Kavli NDI researchers Hughes EG, Orthmann-Murphy JL et al., demonstrates how oligodendrocytes are effected by sensory experience to modify mature cortical circuits.

Multiple populations of wake-promoting neurons have been characterized in mammals, but few sleep-promoting neurons have been identified. Johns Hopkins Kavli NDI researchers Seth Blackshaw and colleagues have identified specific neurons that regulate sleep by inhibiting the activity of wake-promoting cells.

A Johns Hopkins University mathematician and computer scientist joined an international team of neuroscientists to create a complete map, known as a "connectome", of the learning and memory center of the fruit fly larva brain, an early step toward mapping how all animal brains work. 

A recent report by Chevée et al., resulting from collaborative efforts by Kavli NDI affiliated laboratories of Drs. Solange Brown and Loyal Goff, reveals that axonal projection pattern, laminar position, and activity state define significant axes of variation that contribute both to the transcriptional identity of individual neurons and to the transcriptional heterogeneity within each neuronal subtype.

NSF recently partnered with Kavli to host a conference for researchers from universities and organizations across the globe. The conference was designed to spark new initiatives and partnerships, and to plan for the next steps towards accelerating brain science discovery in the cloud.

A team from Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering department, led by professor and Kavli NDI affiliate, Dr. Xiaoqin Wang, recieves a multimillion dollar award to investigate how electrostimulation of the vagus nerve might improve speech and language acquisition.

The Kavli NDI Visiting Scientist Program was developed to foster collaborations between Kavli NDI members and internationally renowned scientists. 

The Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute at Johns Hopkins University, launched in early 2016, brings an interdisciplinary group of researchers together to investigate the workings of the brain.