Center For Brain Behavior And Cognition News | Center for Brain, Behavior, and Cognition

Queen bees emit a pheromone that attracts worker bees — the queen's daughters — to her side. Credit: Sean Bresnahan. All Rights Reserved.

Jun 20, 2025

How a genetic tug-of-war decides the fate of a honey bee

Despite having identical genetic instructions, female honey bee larvae can develop into either long-lived reproductive queens or short-lived sterile workers who help rear their sisters rather than laying their own eggs. Now, an interdisciplinary team led by researchers at Penn State has uncovered the molecular mechanisms that control how the conflict between genes inherited from the father and the mother determine the larva’s fate.

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Nikki Crowley, left, principal investigator and director of the Penn State Neuroscience Institute at University Park, Huck Early Career Chair in Neurobiology and Neural Engineering and assistant professor of biology and of biomedical engineering, and collaborator, Nanyin Zhang, right, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Brain Imaging and professor of biomedical engineering, along with other team members, will use a new five-year, $2.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the long-term effects of excess alcohol drinking during adolescence. Credit: Keith Hickey/Huck Institutes. All Rights Reserved.

Jun 04, 2025

$2.9M grant funds study on long-term effects adolescent binge drinking

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Penn State will use a new five-year, $2,900,000 grant to investigate the long-term effects of excess alcohol drinking during adolescence.

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The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently appointed Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State, to an 18-member study committee to examine the status of insects in North America. Credit: Christina Grozinger / Penn State. Creative Commons

Apr 24, 2025

Grozinger appointed to National Academies committee on insect declines

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently appointed Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State, to an 18-member study committee to examine the status of insects in North America.

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Brook trout, an iconic coldwater fish species native to streams and lakes in the eastern United States and Canada, begin to experience declines in growth rate in water above 61 degrees Fahrenheit and acute heat stress above 68 degrees Fahrenheit. In this study, researchers caught, sampled and released fish in four streams in Pennsylvania. Credit: Jason Keagy/Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

Mar 17, 2025

Threatened by warming waters, brook trout may be able to adapt to hotter weather

Heatwaves appear to trigger heritable gene expression changes that may help make the fish more tolerant of thermal stress, researchers report in novel study.

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The new method may eventually help give insight into why bee populations are declining overall, according to the researchers. Credit: Adonyi Gábor/Unsplash. All Rights Reserved.

Mar 12, 2025

Analyzing genetic ‘signatures’ may give insight into what stresses wild bees

A new method of examining gene expression patterns called landscape transcriptomics may help pinpoint what causes bumble bees stress and could eventually give insight into why bee populations are declining overall.

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Thomas Gould and Carlos Novoa in Gould's laboratory at Penn State University Park. Credit: Dennis Maney / Penn State. Creative Commons

Feb 20, 2025

Young adults may be more vulnerable to nicotine addiction than the middle aged

People in their late teens and early 20s may be more sensitive to nicotine and more susceptible to nicotine addiction than middle aged adults, according to a new study in mice from researchers in the Penn State Department of Biobehavioral Health.

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A research team at Penn State has developed generative models much like ChatGPT to create accurate birdsongs, which could improve understanding of the structure of birdsong and its underlying neurobiology and lend insight in the neural mechanisms of human language. Credit: Zachery Jin. All Rights Reserved.

Feb 14, 2025

ChatGPT for birdsong may shed light on how language is wired in the human brain

Just like ChatGPT and other generative language models train on human texts to create grammatically correct sentences, a new modeling method by researchers at Penn State trains on recordings of birds to create accurate birdsongs.

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Robert Sainburg Credit: Penn State. Creative Commons

Feb 12, 2025

Sainburg named fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology

Robert Sainburg, professor of kinesiology and neurology at Penn State and Dorothy F. and J. Lloyd Huck Distinguished Chair in Kinesiology and Neurology, was recently named a fellow of the National Academy of Kinesiology.

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Credit: StefaNikolic/Getty Images. All Rights Reserved.

Feb 06, 2025

Supportive co-parenting may help secure infant attachment development

Researchers found breastfeeding is linked to positive parenting and secure infant attachment and, when unable to or choosing not to breastfeed, supportive co-parenting can achieve the same outcomes.

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Christina Grozinger was appointed the new director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State. Credit: Christina Grozinger / Penn State. Creative Commons

Jan 21, 2025

Christina Grozinger to lead Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences as director

Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research, has been named the new director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State.

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