News & Announcements
Read the latest news from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Department of Neuroscience. The links below take you to articles where you can learn more about our faculty’s latest achievements, awards and honors.
12.21.2022Salvino was a third-year Interdepartmental Neuroscience (NUIN) PhD student.
12.20.2022Northwestern investigators across the medical school are studying the brain at the molecular, cellular, systems and behavioral levels and using advanced research methodologies and leading-edge technologies to translate scientific discoveries into novel and effective treatments.
11.18.2022Ann Kennedy, PhD, assistant professor of Neuroscience, has been named the winner of the 2022 Eppendorf and Science Prize for Neurobiology.
11.03.2022How are habits – both good and bad – formed in the brain, and what role do habits play in diseases of the brain? These are some of the questions neuroscientist, Talia Lerner, PhD, is investigating in her lab. Her recent study, published in Cell Reports, may change the overall understanding of how habits are formed and could be broken.
10.19.2022Northwestern Medicine investigators have discovered that dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra utilize a specific ion channel to control energy production and meet bioenergetic need, according to a recent study.
08.24.2022Scientists have uncovered how dopamine connects subregions of the striatum essential for habit formation, according to a Northwestern Medicine study.
06.21.2022Lucas Pinto, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor of Neuroscience and a systems neuroscientist. His laboratory studies the neurobiological mechanisms underlying cognition, both at the local circuit level and in largescale interactions between different brain areas.
05.25.2022Northwestern scientists have captured first-of-its-kind in vivo calcium imaging from the CA1 hippocampus (HPC) – the area of the brain essential for memory, spatial navigation and learning – in freely moving rats, offering a better visual representation of how HPC cells organize and change over time.
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found that calcium imaging in rats captures a high number of stable place cells – results consistent with firing patterns seen in electrophysiology and in contrast to mouse imaging studies that only capture a low percentage of place cells. The use of the rat model, which is physiologically more like humans than the mouse model, is also an opportunity to improve experimental processes and holds implications for broadening understanding of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
05.04.2022Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a master gene that programs ear hair cells’ development, overcoming a major hurdle towards restoring hearing.
04.28.2022Four members of the Northwestern University faculty have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Sara A. Solla, professor of Neuroscience, is among this year’s class of 261 artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors.
02.17.2022Recent advances from Northwestern investigators have powered a new, deeper understanding of Parkinson’s disease that could pave the way to a disease-modifying treatment.
02.07.2022Northwestern investigators have discovered that dopamine signaling in the dorsomedial striatum promotes the development of compulsive behaviors, according to findings published in Current Biology.