Dr. Hongtu Zhu, a BRIC faculty member and his team recently published a paper in Science (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn6598).  They used advanced techniques to study the brain and its connection with the rest of the body. Traditional brain imaging methods often overlook the interaction between the brain and other organs. In a recent study, Zhu and colleagues … Read more

Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC-NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, have developed a new method that combines palmitoleic acid, gentamicin, and non-invasive ultrasound to help improve drug delivery in chronic wounds that have been infected with S. aureus. Using their new strategy, researchers including BRIC faculty member Dr. Paul Dayton, and Dr. Sarah … Read more

Researchers from the UNC School of Medicine, led by Ian Shih, PhD, Professor and Vice Chair of Neurology and Associate Director of the Biomedical Research Imaging Center, revealed the role of the insular cortex in controlling the Default Mode Brain Network. When we daydream or revisit memories, a large group of regions within our brain … Read more

Human brain atlases can be used by medical professionals to track normative trends over time and pinpoint crucial aspects of early brain development. With these atlases, they are able to see what typical structural and functional development looks like, making it easier for them to spot the symptoms of abnormal development, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder … Read more

Earlier this year, researchers from Dr. Eva Telzer’s lab published their work in JAMA Pediatrics. Their exciting findings, which were covered not only locally by WRAL, but nationally by both CNN and The New York Times are summarized below. Congratulations to Dr. Telzer and her team! Social media platforms allow adolescents to have unprecedented opportunities … Read more

Alerted connectivity in brain networks may turn them more sensitive to environmental insults and disease. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) PhD student William Stanford, and BRIC member Eran Dayan investigated if brain resilience accounts for differences in cognitive function in healthy aging. This was achieved … Read more

UNC School of Medicine scientists led by Gang Li, PhD, have mapped the surface of the cortex of the young human brain with unprecedented resolution, revealing the development of key functional regions from two months before birth to two years after. The new cortical development mapping, reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of … Read more

Transcriptome-wide association study on 211 brain structural traits Brain structural traits are highly heritable and have been linked to disease. Here the authors have used gene expression data to perform a transcriptome-wide association study on 211 brain structural traits, discovering 273 associated genes. We further validated the discovered genes using multiple methods. The paper was … Read more

Researchers led by Zibo Li, PhD, said their findings could make it possible to attach radioactive tags to compounds that previously have been difficult or even impossible to label.