Dana Foundation Blog

Can We Undo the Course of Neurodegenerative Disease?

Columbia professor Rene Hen, Ph.D., called his former student Ai Yamamoto, Ph.D. , “one of the new young stars of Columbia University.” In describing her research into neurodegenerative disease, he cited “remarkable discoveries that have generated enormous hope.”

Following her mentor at Wednesday’s event, hosted by the University’s Mind Brain Behavior Institute and sponsored by the Dana Foundation, Dr. Yamamoto expressed gratitude for these generous words, but also trepidation. “You know those movie trailers that are really good, and then you go and see the movie and are disappointed? There’s a bit of pressure here…”

Yamamoto had little to worry about. The fascinating developments she recounted suggested the possibility not only of arresting the onslaught of diseases like Huntington’s disease (HD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but of undoing the damage done.

NIDA Gives Teens the Straight Dope on Drugs

A guest post from NIDA’s Sara Bellum Blog team.

The teen years: Emotional turmoil. Rampant physical changes. A still-developing brain. It's no wonder that adolescence is a time that holds both promise and risk. Teens are hard at work, through experience and social interactions, constructing and sharing a narrative to establish their unique place in the world—one separate from family.

In the Journal of Social Marketing (February 2013), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and IQ Solutions published a case study on NIDA’s Sara Bellum Blog (SBB), an online forum where teens can engage with NIDA scientists, teachers, and each other to learn the science behind drug abuse and share comments.

In the case study, the NIDA blog team set out to show how SBB can engage teens around the neuroscience of addiction and, in the process, take advantage of a developmental window for promoting healthy decision-making.

Tales from the Lab: Behavioral Adaptations

Grace Lindsay, a neuroscience graduate student from Columbia University, is guest blogging about neuroplasticity for our “Tales from the Lab” series. This is Grace’s third and final blog post.

Adaptation is crucial to survival: in a world where only the fittest survive, changing circumstances call for changing responses. While some bodily adaptations to the environment occur over long, evolutionary timescales, the brain has two key features that allow for behavioral adaptations to occur much faster: complexity and plasticity. The immense number of cells in the brain means that there are many ways that those cells could connect to each other, and plasticity allows for re-wiring that can sample some of these connection possibilities. When inputs to the brain cause re-wiring, the brain's response to a future input will be different—and hopefully more beneficial to the animal–than it was before. Acquiring a new physical skill, learning to avoid places associated with danger, and figuring out how to extract relevant information in a new environment are all adaptive behaviors that rely on this ability.

Triggering the Brain’s Emotional Response

A relentless rain didn’t keep attendees from filling the elegant auditorium at Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Tuesday evening’s panel discussion on “Shaping the Brain,” a Brain Awareness Week event that also celebrated the Mind Brain Behavior Institute—a university-wide effort to integrate neuroscience with allied disciplines like psychology and statistics, but also studies in the humanities and social sciences.

“I see neuroscience as providing a modern angle on concepts derived and cultivated outside itself,” said Columbia faculty and Dana Alliance member Michael Shadlen. “It’s a two-way exchange, a dialogue.”

Among the three Columbia professors who discussed their work, art historian David Freedberg best exemplified this broad vision. When he began his studies in the 70s, he said, “one was not allowed to talk about emotions in art, let alone the notion that when you look at a picture, your body is involved in the experience.”

But this, he felt sure, was essential to the universal power of great artworks. “My aim was to reinsert emotions and the body back into the esthetic experience…and even in the mid-1980s I realized we couldn’t go ahead without understanding the neural substrate of our emotional, visceral, physical responses to works of art.”

Tales from the Lab: BAW 2013

Tim Balmer, a neuroscience graduate student from Georgia State University, is guest blogging about the life of a graduate student for our “Tales from the Lab” series. This is Tim’s third blog post.

Children love asking questions. It’s how they explore our complicated world. Like scientists, children answer questions with experiments. For example, “Is this food?” may lead a child to put the item in question in his or her mouth. The “why” questions become particularly interesting at about age three. Sustaining a child’s interest in these questions is a great responsibility to society and is vital to the future of science—children who never stop asking these questions become scientists.

Brain Awareness Week (BAW) is a global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefit of brain research. Since it was founded in 1996 by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, participants have inspired many thousands of students in classrooms around the world. The annual event officially occurs the third week of March (this year, March 11-15), although many partners are involved in classroom visits year-round.