Precise, brain-wide maps reveal the oligodendrocyte landscape across time and space. 

Myelin is the insulating layer that wraps nerve fibers, allowing brain cells to communicate quickly. In adults, new myelin is made by oligodendrocytes that arise from precursor cells (OPCs). Using genetic tools and live imaging in mice, this study publishes in Science, led by Yevgeniya A. Mironova from Kavli NDI member, Dwight Bergles’ lab, shows that OPCs attempt to mature into myelin-producing cells on a regular, internal schedule across the brain and spinal cord. 

Please join us to congratulate Kavli NDI PIs Dr. Cindy Moss and Dr. Kishore Kuchibhotla, on being awarded a Kavli-NSF NICE grant.

We are proud to share that Dr. Patricia Janak has been elected President of the Society for Neuroscience.

A study led by Kavli NDI PI Kishore Kuchibotla, Kavli NDI Distinguished Post Doctoral Fellow Celine Drieu and Distinguished Doctoral Fellow Ziyi Zhu has identified the neural basis of the distinction between learning and performance.

Please join us in congratulating Jean Fan on receiving the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). 

Neuronal selectivity, a neuron’s ability to respond to specific stimuli, is critical to determine how the neuron behaves to different cues. A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University, including Kavli NDI members, Ingie Hong, Richard Huganir, Seth Blackshaw, Dwight E. Bergles and Solange P. Brown have identified a subtype of receptors, Calcium Permeable AMPA receptors, that are responsible for controlling neuronal selectivity. 

Kavli NDI PI, Dwight Bergles and team leverage the power of AI to make fundamental discoveries in neuroscience.

Neural circuits undergo changes when learning a new sound. Kavli NDI PI, Patrick Kanold and team, using a combination of advanced imaging techniques and AI, identified precise brain regions that are that recruited during this learning process. 

Kavli NDI PI, Patrick Kanold’s latest work with the Allen Institute for Brain Sciences and Antony Zador at Coldspring Harbor Lab sheds light the role of visual inputs on defining the transcriptomic landscape of the visual cortex.

Kavli NDI PI  Kathleen Cullen, is one among the four from Hopkins BME elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering 2024 College of Fellows.

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Kavli NDI celebrates ou WomenInScience. Join us in honoring their contributions to the field

Kavli NDI PI Keri Martinowich and team identify a signaling pathway in the Lateral Septum that could regulate gene networks associated with neuro psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.

For the first two weeks of life, mice with a hereditary form of deafness have nearly normal neural activity in the auditory system, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists. 

Precise connections between cortical hemispheres are crucial for sensory perception. Aberrant wiringacross hemispheres underlies sensory deficits seen in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Visualizing connections between nerve cells in brains of mice is enabled by artificial intelligence

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.”

Kavli NDI Scientists receive a $2.7 million National Institutes of Health grant to integrate AI and Engineering, to record brain signals 50X faster. 

Please join us in congratulating Kavli NDI member, Dr. Cynthia Moss on being selected for a Simons Foundation Collaboration. The newly launched Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE) brings together 20 leading researchers worldwide to investigate the neural basis of natural behaviors across species.

Please join us in congratulating Jeremias Sulam on being named William R. Brody Faculty Scholar in Biomedical Engineering

Join us in congratulating Genevieve Stein-O'Brien, Bloomberg Assistant Professor of Neuroscience,  as she receives the inaugural Terkowitz Family Rising Professorship in the Brain Science Institute. 

A team lead by a team of Bloomberg Distinguished Professors and Kavli NDI PIs Patricia Janak, Daeyeol Lee and Kavli NDI Distinguished Post Doctoral Fellow Yifeng Cheng, shows that areas of the brain associated with decision making showed altered neural activity in response to alcohol exposure

Congratulations to Adam Charles on receiving the NSF Career Award.

Please join us in congratulating Kavli NDI PI,  Dr. Dingchang Lin as he receives the prestigious 2024 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.  

While it was previously understood that the brain uses landmarks for location and speed calibration. However, it wasn't clear if these landmarks were essential for recalibrating speed. Kavli NDI PI James Kneirim and Noah Cowan demonstrates that visual motion cues alone can recalibrate, even when visual landmarks are absent. 

We are pleased to announce the Kavli NDI Distinguished Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowship Awardees for the 2024-25 cycle. We are thrilled to support 7 outstanding, high-impact, innovative, transdisciplinary research projects in each category to bring together diverse expertise in neuroscience, engineering or data science across the Hopkins community. Congratulations to all the awardees.

Kavli NDI PI Patricia Janak is one of the six Johns Hopkins scientists named a fellows of American Association for Advancement of Science. 

Kavli NDI PI Richard Huganir and team have discovered an additional role of the gene SYNGAP1. 

Kavli NDI Distinguished Doctoral fellow Kaitlin Stouffer talks about her recent work that sheds light on the possible link between Amygdala and early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Read more here. 

Congratulations to Dr. Chaudhari, post doctoral resreacher with Kavli NDI PI, Aleks Kolodkin's group on receiving the inaugural Dubose postdoc research scholar award.

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Congratulations Prof. Bergles

A recent stuy led by Kavli NDI members in mice could shed light on how psychedelic drugs work.

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.