Neuroscience News | Neuroscience | The Huck Institutes (en-US)

A team of researchers at Penn State found that increasing spiciness slightly using dried chili pepper slowed down eating and reduced the amount of food and energy consumed at a meal, all without negatively affecting the palatability of the dish. The study was led by Paige Cunningham, pictured, a postdoctoral researcher who earned her doctorate in nutritional sciences from Penn State in 2023. Credit: Patrick Mansell / Penn State. Creative Commons

May 22, 2025

Looking to cut calories? Try adding chilies, study suggests

Throwing a little heat on your meal might be an effective strategy for cutting back on calories, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.

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The lightweight and flexible electrode, which looks like a strand of hair, attaches directly to the scalp and delivers stable, high-quality recordings of the brain’s signals. Credit: Courtesy of the Zhou Lab / Penn State. Creative Commons

May 05, 2025

The future of brain activity monitoring may look like a strand of hair

A new hairlike electrode makes long-term, high-quality EEG monitoring less cumbersome and inconspicuous.

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Treponema pallidum, represented in this illustration as purple corkscrews, is the bacterium that gives rise to syphilis. Credit: Illustration by quantic69/Getty Images. All Rights Reserved.

May 02, 2025

$2.7M NIH grant to fund first comprehensive syphilis test

In collaboration with his clinical partners at Penn State Health, Carle Foundation Hospital and University of Alabama Birmingham, Dipanjan Pan aims to develop a one-step confirmatory laboratory test that can definitively diagnose active syphilis infection within 10 minutes.

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Apr 29, 2025

HGSAC prepares for largest Life Sciences Symposium yet

The Life Sciences Symposium, organized by the Huck Graduate Student Advisory Committee (HGSAC), is set to showcase student research on May 23.

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Julio Flores Cuadra, left, is pursuing a graduate degree in neuroscience at Penn State, and Junyao Yuan, is pursuing one in integrative and biomedical physiology. Credit: Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

Apr 28, 2025

Penn State graduate students receive American Heart Association fellowships

Two Penn State graduate students enrolled in Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs administered by the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences have each been awarded two-year American Heart Association (AHA) Postdoctoral Fellowships.

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Nelson Roque (left) and Alexis Santos (right) found that 58% of counties in the United States have no air-quality monitoring. Credit: Dennis Maney / Penn State. Creative Commons

Apr 22, 2025

How safe is the air to breathe? 50 million people in the US don't know

More than half of counties in United States have no air-quality monitoring, according to study by researchers from Penn State.

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Increases in insomnia were followed by increased risk of movement and self-care disabilities, according to a new study by researchers in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development. Credit: Filmstax/Getty Images. All Rights Reserved.

Apr 18, 2025

Insomnia and sleep medication use connected to disability in older adults

Increases in insomnia were followed by increased risk of movement and self-care disabilities, according to a new study by researchers at Penn State.

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The four Penn State Goldwater Scholars are, clockwise from top left, Luc Schrauf, Elisabeth Groff, Zach Badinger and Megan von Abo. Credit: Provided. All Rights Reserved.

Apr 16, 2025

Four Penn State undergraduates earn Goldwater Scholarships

Four Penn State undergraduates were named Goldwater Scholars for 2025-26, based on their outstanding academic merit and research experience. Goldwater Scholars are selected for their potential as leaders in the fields of natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

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The U.S. National Science Foundation National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences at Penn State recently announced its first cohort of working groups. The center is supporting 10 initial working groups which will conduct research in accordance with open science principles, producing peer-reviewed articles, public datasets and reproducible workflows. The working groups will reuse and integrate diverse datasets, creatively visualized in this illustration, to gain insights about emergent properties that could potentially answer fundamental scientific questions and lead to transformative discoveries. Credit: NicoElNino/Alamy Stock Photo. All Rights Reserved.

Apr 09, 2025

NCEMS working groups to answer molecular and cellular bioscience questions

The U.S. National Science Foundation National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences at Penn State aims to drive multidisciplinary collaboration utilizing publicly available research data.

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Nivetha Gunaseelan has been awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association to condcuct research that could impact how physicians treat brain injuries. Credit: Provided by Dipanjan Pan/Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

Apr 01, 2025

Biomedical engineering grad student earns American Heart Association fellowship

The American Heart Association (AHA) awarded Nivetha Gunaseelan, a doctoral candidate studying biomedical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, a predoctoral fellowship.

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