News

Friday, August 12, 2022
PittWire: How not to use brain scans in neuroscience

A Nature paper led by PhD student Brenden Tervo-Clemmens revealed a crucial flaw in studies that attempt to predict complex personality traits from one-off brain scans. Learn More

Tuesday, August 2, 2022
Transfusions of purified immune cells protect against stroke in mice

A study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation identified CD8+ regulatory-like T cells that provide direct neuroprotective effects, as well as limit inflammation and secondary brain damage. Learn More

Friday, July 29, 2022
Specialized brain regions recognize vocal cues that don’t involve speech

In PLOS Biology, Taylor Abel and colleagues showed that two areas of the auditory cortex help us instantly identify characteristics of a speaker, including gender, age, mood and even height.   Learn More

Thursday, July 21, 2022
Study challenges dogma behind Alzheimer’s drug trials

Tharick Pascoal reports in Nature Communications that HDAC inhibitors—now in clinical testing against mild Alzheimer’s disease—might be harming rather than helping patients. Learn More

Friday, July 15, 2022
Virologists identify better model to study brain-attacking viruses

Anita McElroy and colleagues developed the first mouse model that mimics brain damage caused by Rift Valley fever virus, which belongs to a family of viruses likely to give rise to future pandemics. Learn More

Friday, July 1, 2022
Nature Neuroscience: New tech aids arm control in paralysis

Electrical stimulation of nerve roots sprouting from the spinal cord toward arm and hand muscles improved precision, force and range of movement in animals with cervical spinal cord injury.     Learn More

Friday, June 24, 2022
The Conversation: How do painkillers actually kill pain?

Rebecca Seal and Benedict Alter describe how practitioners match drugs to specific types of pain. Learn More

Wednesday, June 22, 2022
At-home BCI will allow quadriplegic people to write their own emails

Blackrock Neurotech is teaming with Pitt to test a compact, remote brain-computer interface system that people who are paralyzed can use outside the lab to operate electronic devices. Learn More

Tuesday, June 21, 2022
NPR: Monkey noises may help explain the evolution of human speech

Christina Cerkevich and Peter Strick found striking differences in the brain anatomy of macaques, which have limited ability to vocalize, and marmosets, which have remarkable vocal skills. Learn More

Thursday, June 9, 2022
NPR: Lee Fisher talks about tapping into the spinal cord to restore lost sensation

A team at Pitt is working to connect prosthetic arms and legs with the nervous system to give patients a sense of touch. Learn More

Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Cortical connectivity is embedded in resting state at columnar resolution

Omar Gharbawie and Nick Card report in Progress in Neurobiology on their use of intrinsic signal optical imaging to study neural networks in living brains.   Learn More

Thursday, May 5, 2022
PNAS study: Multiple brain regions found to control complex speech

Christina Cerkevich and colleagues found parallel processing in neural wiring, challenging the common assumption that primary motor cortex has sole influence on the larynx.  Learn More

Friday, April 29, 2022
Can melatonin help prevent neuron damage associated with dementia?

Robert Friedlander and Amantha Thathiah will use a $200K grant from the Clear Thoughts Foundation to study whether melatonin treatment can increase the survival of brain cells in Alzheimer’s disease Learn More

Friday, April 29, 2022
PNAS study: How Ritalin sharpens visual attention

The study led by Marlene Cohen tests hypotheses about neural coding principles as well as uncovering neuronal mechanisms that underlie the behavioral effects of methylphenidate. Learn More

Monday, February 7, 2022
Brain circuit tied to emotion may lead to better treatments for Parkinson's

NPR interviews the Pitt team that seeks to find the biological underpinnings of paradoxical kinesia. Learn More

Friday, February 4, 2022
Gandhi lab untangles mixed neural signals

A study in Current Biology suggests how neurons are able tell motor signals apart from sensory signals, and let the brain know when to make the body move.     Learn More

Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Placebo-inspired project wins $12M grant for Parkinson’s

A multidiscipinary team led by Peter Strick plans to study and exploit a neural circuit that receives input from brain sites such as the amygdala that are largely unaffected by Parkinson’s. Learn More

Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Childhood stress changes brain regions needed for learning

The study in Neuropsychopharmacology revealed distinctive shape differences in fiber bundles of white matter in the accumbofrontal tract, which correspond to oversensitivity to negative feedback.   Learn More

Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Leah Byrne aims to speed cures for genetic blindness

A novel computational platform identifies top-performing viral vectors that could deliver gene therapies to the retina with maximum efficiency and precision. Learn More

Friday, October 8, 2021
Pitt awarded $40M NIH grant to compare tau tracers for detecting Alzheimer's

Tharick Pascoal and colleagues aim to build a scale to align scans that use different tracers, so clinicians can make more informed treatment decisions.   Learn More

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