UC Science Today

Almost all animals with vocalizations have pretty innate ones. In other words, if a dog never met another dog, he will still bark exactly the same. But no so with birds. Hamish Mehaffey, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, studies how birds learn to sing.

"In birds, if they don’t hear other birds sing, they will sing a terrible, nonsensical song that will make them very unpopular when they finally meet other birds and they usually try to mimic the songs that they hear around them. So, even within the exact same species, there are differences in the songs."

Mehaffey and his colleagues have discovered the specific neurological mechanism by which songbirds can experiment and refine their songs as they become adults.

"We were looking at how two different pathways interact in order to allow birds to sing; one is required for the bird to sing a normal adult song and the other one was required for any kind of changes."

Understanding this mechanism in birds can help explain how the human brain learns complex motor skills and may even someday help treat neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease.

When it comes to movement, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about what’s actually being mapped in the brain, but researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Action Lab are working to decode the cognitive architecture that underlies what’s called goal-directed movement. Graduate student Deborah Barany is part of the team.

"My research broadly focuses on the neuromechanisms that underlie our goal directed action. So, basically anything that involves the brain when you move – your brain is planning in some way, whether you know it or not. So I’m basically trying to ask the question, “how is the brain organized so that we can make these successful movements?”

Barany developed a new analysis tool that allows researchers to zoom in on active regions of the brain during specific movements. This understanding may help advance neural prosthetics or even enhance the field of robotics.

"Being able to adapt through the environment and move around obstacles and make these fast changes."

How does the brain of a schizophrenic patient differ, functionally, from others? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego’s Multimodal Imaging Lab are able to use computational modeling and brain imaging methods to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. For graduate student Chun Chieh Fan working in this lab has been especially enlightening.

"I was always interested in how human brain work. Back in my hometown, I’m a psychiatrist. I can only talk; I can only try to understand where the problem come from. I hope with the advance of brain imaging technology, we can actually begin to understand what happened to human’s mind and human’s brain. And with better resolution instead of only talk."

Fan recently used the labs imaging techniques to discover that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex strongly correlates with one’s ancestral background. And this may lead to a more personalized medicine approach for diagnosing and treating brain diseases.

When it comes to movement, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about what’s actually being mapped in the brain, but researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Action Lab are working to decode the cognitive architecture that underlies what’s called goal-directed movement. Graduate student Deborah Barany is part of the team.

"My research broadly focuses on the neuromechanisms that underlie our goal directed action. So, basically anything that involves the brain when you move – your brain is planning in some way, whether you know it or not. So I’m basically trying to ask the question, “how is the brain organized so that we can make these successful movements?”

Barany developed a new analysis tool that allows researchers to zoom in on active regions of the brain during specific movements. This understanding may help advance neural prosthetics or even enhance the field of robotics.

"Being able to adapt through the environment and move around obstacles and make these fast changes."

How does the brain of a schizophrenic patient differ, functionally, from others? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego’s Multimodal Imaging Lab are able to use computational modeling and brain imaging methods to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. For graduate student Chun Chieh Fan working in this lab has been especially enlightening.

"I was always interested in how human brain work. Back in my hometown, I’m a psychiatrist. I can only talk; I can only try to understand where the problem come from. I hope with the advance of brain imaging technology, we can actually begin to understand what happened to human’s mind and human’s brain. And with better resolution instead of only talk."

Fan recently used the labs imaging techniques to discover that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex strongly correlates with one’s ancestral background. And this may lead to a more personalized medicine approach for diagnosing and treating brain diseases.

When it comes to movement, there’s still a lot that’s unknown about what’s actually being mapped in the brain, but researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Action Lab are working to decode the cognitive architecture that underlies what’s called goal-directed movement. Graduate student Deborah Barany is part of the team.

"My research broadly focuses on the neuromechanisms that underlie our goal directed action. So, basically anything that involves the brain when you move – your brain is planning in some way, whether you know it or not. So I’m basically trying to ask the question, “how is the brain organized so that we can make these successful movements?”

Barany developed a new analysis tool that allows researchers to zoom in on active regions of the brain during specific movements. This understanding may help advance neural prosthetics or even enhance the field of robotics.

"Being able to adapt through the environment and move around obstacles and make these fast changes."

How does the brain of a schizophrenic patient differ, functionally, from others? Researchers at the University of California, San Diego’s Multimodal Imaging Lab are able to use computational modeling and brain imaging methods to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. For graduate student Chun Chieh Fan working in this lab has been especially enlightening.

"I was always interested in how human brain work. Back in my hometown, I’m a psychiatrist. I can only talk; I can only try to understand where the problem come from. I hope with the advance of brain imaging technology, we can actually begin to understand what happened to human’s mind and human’s brain. And with better resolution instead of only talk."

Fan recently used the labs imaging techniques to discover that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex strongly correlates with one’s ancestral background. And this may lead to a more personalized medicine approach for diagnosing and treating brain diseases.

Sometime this year, consumers will be able to buy a first-generation version of a wearable patch that can serve as a protective shield against bloodthirsty mosquitoes. The Kite Patch works by rendering the user seemingly invisible to mosquitoes by emitting odors that block their ability to detect the carbon dioxide that humans exhale. The technology is based on University of California, Riverside research and as Anandasankar Ray, who led the project, explains, it will hit the market soon because it uses ingredients that are considered safe by the EPA.

"Most of the chemicals we are using are actually classified as ‘generally regarded as safe – GRAS’, so a very special classification for the food and flavor industry. That means that there’s a lot of testing that has already occurred with those chemicals."

Nearly a billion people worldwide are affected by mosquito-borne diseases and half a million people die each year from malaria – many are young children.

"So there are immediate needs to try and find ways to prevent the spread of these diseases."

http://www.kitepatch.com/

Researchers at UCLA conducted a proof-of-concept study to see if gut bacteria could affect brain function. Dr. Emeran Mayer says their 4-week study looked at healthy women who regularly ate probiotics in yogurt.

"We saw an extensive network of brain regions that differed from the beginning of the study to the end of the study. This network included sensory regions, as well as pain modulatory regions. And what was most interesting is that the intervention showed a change in the connectivity of this network. So the individuals that consumed the probiotic mix had a decrease in this network, so they showed a decreased response to negative emotional recognition tests, as opposed to the control group that got non-fermented milk product that did not show change or the group that had no intervention at all, which should a slight increase during that time."

These findings could have significant implications for future dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function.

Sometime this year, consumers will be able to buy a first-generation version of a wearable patch that can serve as a protective shield against bloodthirsty mosquitoes. The Kite Patch works by rendering the user seemingly invisible to mosquitoes by emitting odors that block their ability to detect the carbon dioxide that humans exhale. The technology is based on University of California, Riverside research and as Anandasankar Ray, who led the project, explains, it will hit the market soon because it uses ingredients that are considered safe by the EPA.

"Most of the chemicals we are using are actually classified as ‘generally regarded as safe – GRAS’, so a very special classification for the food and flavor industry. That means that there’s a lot of testing that has already occurred with those chemicals."

Nearly a billion people worldwide are affected by mosquito-borne diseases and half a million people die each year from malaria – many are young children.

"So there are immediate needs to try and find ways to prevent the spread of these diseases."

http://www.kitepatch.com/