Neuroscience Graduate Group

Hippocampus Is the Brain’s Storyteller

People love stories. We find it easier to remember events when they are part of an overarching narrative. But in real life, the chapters of a story don’t follow smoothly one from another. Other things happen in between. A new brain imaging study from the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis, shows that the hippocampus is the brain’s storyteller, connecting separate, distant events into a single narrative. The work is published Sept. 29 in Current Biology.

UC Davis Researchers Among Successful PREP Scholars Admitted to Campus Graduate Programs

Four UC Davis postbaccalaureate researchers returned to campus this fall as both graduate students and fellows of the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The NSF GRFP supports outstanding scholars in STEM fields, providing a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees.

Researchers Identify a Potentially Safer Approach to Opioid Drug Development

Opioids are powerful painkillers but their use is hindered because patients become tolerant to them, requiring higher and higher doses, and overdoses can cause respiratory depression and death. A recent study from researchers at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience contradicts existing thinking about how opioid drugs cause tolerance and respiratory depression, and suggests a new, balanced approach to developing safer analgesics. The work was published July 13 in Neuropsychopharmacology.

Evolutionary Thinking

We watch a ball as it falls into our glove. We hear a strange sound in another part of the house and listen intently. In neuroscience, the act of narrowing our senses in response to an environmental event is called “attention,” and it is understood that when we attend to a stimulus, we lose the ability to focus on other surrounding inputs.

UC Davis Receives $15 Million Grant to Study the Effects of Maternal Infection on Risk for Psychiatric Illness in Offspring

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded a $15.7 million grant to the UC Davis Silvio O. Conte Center, one of only 15 Conte Centers nationwide.

Psychiatric illnesses and neurodevelopmental disorders, including schizophrenia, affect 15-20 percent of the population worldwide, yet current treatments are at best only partially effective. The UC Davis Conte Center was first established in 2016 through the Center for Neuroscience to determine how maternal infection increases risk for these disorders and to identify new targets for novel treatments.

Science Snaps: Neuroscience Graduate Group Student Jaleel Jefferson Explores the Pathology of Neurodegeneration

Neuroscience Graduate Group student Jaleel Jefferson investigates the neuropathology of a condition known as HIV Associated Neurocognitive Disorders (HAND), which encompasses “a spectrum of cognitive, motor, and/or mood problems” that affect people with HIV. In this Science Snapshot, he walks us through some neuronal imagery and shares some of his path to science.