Full details of the announcement can be found on the Beckman Foundation Website. The funded project title is : Bidirectional Neuroprosthetics with Miniature Optical Brain Machine Interfaces Optical brain machine interfaces use light to monitor and manipulate activity, but current technologies cannot reliably communicate with more than a few dozen neurons in parallel because they are … Read more

The lab of Greg Scherrer, PhD, associate professor in the UNC Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, investigates the precise ways in which opioids interact with brain mechanisms and then, armed with a better understanding of the underlying biology, the lab pursues new ways to block pain without causing significant side effects. A member of … Read more

Dr. Jason Stein (Assistant Professor, Department of Genetics) and colleagues have published a manuscript in Nature Neuroscience (20 May 2021) titled “Cell-type specific effects of genetic variation on chromatin accessibility during human neuronal differentiation”. This study, led by Dr. Dan Liang as part of her dissertation research, was focused on modeling the functional impact of … Read more

The labs of Jose Rodríguez-Romaguera, Jason Stein, and Hyejung Wong were each awarded $50k pilot grants from NC TraCs. Jose Rodríguez-Romaguera, PhD will be collaborating with Rebecca Grzadzinski, PhD (Asst Professor, Psychiatry/Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities) in a project entitled “Atypical Social Arousal as an Early Marker of ASD.” Jason Stein, PhD will collaborate with … Read more

The discovery, from the UNC School of Medicine lab of Mark Zylka, PhD, offers pain researchers a new, precise target to treat inflammation associated with neuropathic pain. Mark Zylka, PhD CHAPEL HILL, NC – One of the hallmarks of chronic pain is inflammation, and scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have discovered that anti-inflammatory … Read more

Greg Scherrer, PhD, associate professor in the UNC Department of Cell biology and Physiology and member of the UNC Neuroscience Center, will use the three-year, $300,000 grant to study the neural basis of pain.   The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience selected three projects to receive the 2021 Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Awards, each totaling … Read more

Published in Nature, research led by Mark Zylka, PhD, at the UNC School of Medicine, shows how gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9 can restore function in an animal model of the neurodevelopmental condition Angelman syndrome. Mark Zylka, PhD CHAPEL HILL, NC – October 21, 2020 – Babies born with a faulty maternal copy of the UBE3A … Read more

In a study published in Translational Psychiatry, research led by Hyejung Won, PhD, and Jason Stein, PhD, assistant professors in the UNC Department of Genetics and members of the UNC Neuroscience Center, found that lowered expression of a gene called DDHD2 may increase a person’s likelihood of autism. Spectrum News, a leading source of news and … Read more

Hallucinogens like lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, and substituted N-benzyl phenylalkylamines are widely used recreationally with psilocybin being considered…Find the full paper here.

Congratulations to the Juan Song lab on their work on “Neuropeptides Modulate Local Astrocytes to Regulate Adult Hippocampal Neural Stem Cells”, now online @NeuroCellPress! Read the full paper in Neuron.