Neuroscience

Thanks to deep brain stimulation, an artist stricken with a common but lesser known neurological disorder called essential tremor can paint again with a steady hand.

Scientists have identified a key factor in mental aging and shown that it might be prevented or reversed by fixing a glitch in the immune system’s front-line soldiers.

A Stanford Medicine team used human stem cells to assemble a working nerve circuit connecting brain tissue to muscle tissue. The research could enable scientists to better understand neurological disorders that affect movement.

Annelise Barron, Peter Kim, Siddhartha Jaiswal and Keren Haroush will receive grants totaling $10 million to fund their investigations. The awards support risky efforts that could potentially have a big impact in the biomedical sciences.

A common genetic deletion boosts the risk for schizophrenia by 30-fold. Generating nerve cells from people with the deletion has showed Stanford researchers why.

Stanford scientists identified brain circuitry that plays a role in the mysterious experience called dissociation, in which people can feel disconnected from their bodies and reality.

Lim, a clinician, surgeon and researcher at Johns Hopkins who has focused largely on immunotherapy for brain tumors, will succeed Gary Steinberg as chair of the department, starting Sept. 1.

The Stanford-based center’s affiliated faculty and staff, aided by more than 400 volunteers, conduct research on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and related disorders.

MRI brain scans show subtle changes consistent with inflammation in a severe childhood disease in which the immune system is thought to attack the brain, Stanford researchers found.

Cerebrospinal fluid levels of a hormone called vasopressin were lower in babies who went on to develop autism than in those who did not, a study found.

The researchers also identified a molecular pathway involved in turning back the clock on the cells. Drugs that could manipulate the pathway might be an effective substitute for exercise, they suggest.