Center For Brain Behavior And Cognition News | Center for Brain, Behavior, and Cognition

The study focused on the horned-face bee, which helps pollinate crops like apples and blueberries, and the alfalfa leafcutting bee, which pollinates alfalfa. Credit: Alain C./Flickr. All Rights Reserved.

Jan 07, 2025

Quantity over quality? Different bees are attracted to different floral traits

When it comes to deciding where they’re going to get their next meal, different species of bees may be attracted to different flower traits, according to a study led by researchers at Penn State and published in PNAS Nexus.

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The Penn State Neuroscience community kicked off their 2024-25 seminar series with presentations by the second-year doctoral students in the Huck Neuroscience Program. The 2024 Big 10 Neuroscience Annual Meeting will provide similar events for student presentations and networking and will feature presentations from all career stages. Credit: Dan Levy and Keith Hickey/Huck Institutes. All Rights Reserved.

Jan 06, 2025

Fourth annual Big Ten Neuroscience Symposium to convene at Penn State

The Penn State Neuroscience Institute, through the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and the Penn State College of Medicine, will host the Big Ten Neuroscience Annual Meeting on July 21 and 22 at the Nittany Lion Inn in State College.

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New research finds sex-specific regions of the brain can relieve the detrimental effects of chronic stress in male and female mice. Left: Schematic showing a cortical microcircuit with three types of interneurons expressing somatostatin (SST), parvalbumin (PV) or vasointestinal peptide (VIP) and their distinct patterns of innervation of glutamatergic output neurons (PNs), with thin lines representing axons that send chemical signals and the thicker lines of PNs representing dendrites that receive information. There is selective innervation of the distal ends of PN dendrites by axons of SST neurons. Right: Increased activity of SST neurons by genetically induced disinhibition, on top right, or by chemogenetic activation of SST neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex, on bottom right, leads to stress resilience and facilitates the reversal of the detrimental behavioral effects of stress exposure in male but not female mice. Credit: Bernhard Lüscher / Penn State. Creative Commons

Dec 17, 2024

Brain regions that relieve effects of chronic stress in mice differ based on sex

In two new studies, researchers made mice resilient to stress by activating neurons in different brain regions and found that the changes involved are highly sex-specific

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Dec 12, 2024

Center for Socially Responsible AI awards seed funding to seven diverse projects

The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence (CSRAI) has announced the results of its most recent seed-funding competition.

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Through studies on rats, a team of researchers at Penn State has pinpointed the exact moment of loss of consciousness due to anesthesia, mapping what happens in different brain regions during that moment. Credit: Provided by Nanyin Zhang . All Rights Reserved.

Dec 11, 2024

Brain mechanisms underpinning loss of consciousness identified

Rapid activity in three brain regions appears to trigger loss of consciousness, researchers at Penn State find.

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Dec 12, 2024

Relieving chronic stress in the brains of male and female mice

In two new studies, researchers made mice resilient to stress by activating neurons in different brain regions and show that the brain regions and gene expression changes involved are highly sex-specific.

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Nov 13, 2024

Neuroscience student wins National Research Service Award fellowship

Chad Brunswick, a Ph.D candidate in the Huck Institutes’ intercollege graduate degree program in Neuroscience, has been awarded a prestigious National Research Service Award (NRSA) from the National Institute on Aging, one of the constituent institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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Nov 14, 2024

Three Penn State researchers awarded scientific grants from Kaufman Foundation

The Charles E. Kaufman Foundation — a supporting organization of The Pittsburgh Foundation, which works to improve the quality of life in the Pittsburgh region — has selected three Penn State researchers to receive scientific research grants. The foundation awards grants to scientists at institutes of higher learning in Pennsylvania who are conducting innovative, fundamental scientific research in the fields of biology, chemistry and physics.

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Nov 12, 2024

Uncharted territory: A Q&A with Nanyin Zhang on mapping brain activity

To understand how different regions of the brain work together, researchers use a method called resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI). The method measures brain activity by observing changes in blood flow to different parts of the brain; however, rsfMRI does not explain how these blood flow changes to different brain regions relate to what is happening with the brain’s neurons — cells that send and receive messages in the form of electronic signals.

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Laura Cabrera, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, will develop a patient-centered decision aid to help patients, caregivers and providers make decisions about neurotechnology treatments. Credit: Kate Myers/Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

Sep 17, 2024

Q&A: Ethical decision-making around neurotechnology treatments

Laura Cabrera, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, has received a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to research and develop a patient-centered decision aid to help guide patients, providers, and caregivers navigating their options.

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