Neuroscience Institute News | Neuroscience Institute

Orfeu Buxton, Elizabeth Susman Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State, will present the 2025 Pattishall Research Lecture, “Sleep Health Across the Life Span,” on Wednesday, Feb. 5 at 3 p.m. in the Edna Bennett Pierce Living Center (110 Henderson Building). Credit: via Getty Images; A Mokhtari and Annandistock. All Rights Reserved.

Jan 21, 2025

Feb. 5 lecture to discuss how sleep health affects daily life, long-term health

Orfeu Buxton, Elizabeth Susman Professor of Biobehavioral Health, will present the 2025 Pattishall Research Lecture

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Through a series of experiments, the research team led by Scott Medina, right, William and Wendy Korb Early Career Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Penn State, replaced the water-based solution commonly used in protein-based medications with a perfluorocarbon oil and tested five different proteins with a range of health-related functions such as antibodies and enzymes. Credit: Penn State. Creative Commons

Jan 17, 2025

Discovery could eliminate need to refrigerate vaccines and protein-based drugs

A new storage technique can keep protein-based drugs and vaccines stable without keeping them cold. The discovery, led by researchers at Penn State, could eliminate the need for refrigeration for hundreds of life-saving medicines like insulin, monoclonal antibodies and viral vaccines.

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The Penn State Neuroscience community kicked off their 2024-25 seminar series with presentations by the second-year doctoral students in the Huck Neuroscience Program. The 2024 Big 10 Neuroscience Annual Meeting will provide similar events for student presentations and networking and will feature presentations from all career stages. Credit: Dan Levy and Keith Hickey/Huck Institutes. All Rights Reserved.

Jan 06, 2025

Fourth annual Big Ten Neuroscience Symposium to convene at Penn State

The Penn State Neuroscience Institute, through the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and the Penn State College of Medicine, will host the Big Ten Neuroscience Annual Meeting on July 21 and 22 at the Nittany Lion Inn in State College.

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New research finds sex-specific regions of the brain can relieve the detrimental effects of chronic stress in male and female mice. Left: Schematic showing a cortical microcircuit with three types of interneurons expressing somatostatin (SST), parvalbumin (PV) or vasointestinal peptide (VIP) and their distinct patterns of innervation of glutamatergic output neurons (PNs), with thin lines representing axons that send chemical signals and the thicker lines of PNs representing dendrites that receive information. There is selective innervation of the distal ends of PN dendrites by axons of SST neurons. Right: Increased activity of SST neurons by genetically induced disinhibition, on top right, or by chemogenetic activation of SST neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex, on bottom right, leads to stress resilience and facilitates the reversal of the detrimental behavioral effects of stress exposure in male but not female mice. Credit: Bernhard Lüscher / Penn State. Creative Commons

Dec 17, 2024

Brain regions that relieve effects of chronic stress in mice differ based on sex

In two new studies, researchers made mice resilient to stress by activating neurons in different brain regions and found that the changes involved are highly sex-specific

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Dec 16, 2024

Two Huck graduate students receive American Heart Association fellowships

Two Huck graduate students awarded individual 2-year American Heart Association fellowships.

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In his research, Xiaogang Hu, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Neurorehabilitation and an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, focuses on creating wearable assistive robotic systems for people with limited use of their limbs, especially their hands, with the goal of the user intuitively controlling the systems and devices on which they rely. Credit: Kate Myers/Penn State. All Rights Reserved.

Dec 17, 2024

Person-centered, bio-inspired research leads to improved control of prosthetics

Penn State researcher focuses on creating wearable assistive robotic systems for people with limited use of their limbs, especially their hands, with the goal of the user intuitively controlling the systems and devices on which they rely.

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Dec 12, 2024

Center for Socially Responsible AI awards seed funding to seven diverse projects

The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence (CSRAI) has announced the results of its most recent seed-funding competition.

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Through studies on rats, a team of researchers at Penn State has pinpointed the exact moment of loss of consciousness due to anesthesia, mapping what happens in different brain regions during that moment. Credit: Provided by Nanyin Zhang . All Rights Reserved.

Dec 11, 2024

Brain mechanisms underpinning loss of consciousness identified

Rapid activity in three brain regions appears to trigger loss of consciousness, researchers at Penn State find.

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Dec 12, 2024

Relieving chronic stress in the brains of male and female mice

In two new studies, researchers made mice resilient to stress by activating neurons in different brain regions and show that the brain regions and gene expression changes involved are highly sex-specific.

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New research shows that binge drinking in early adult mice can lead to long-lasting and potentially permanent dysregulation in the brain. The researchers used patch-clamp electrophysiology, shown here, to understand how signaling in the brain was impacted by alcohol after a long period of abstinence. Credit: Kelby Hochreither / Penn State. Creative Commons

Nov 20, 2024

Early adult binge drinking has lasting impact on aging brain in mice

Binge drinking in early adults can lead to long-lasting and potentially permanent dysregulation in the brain, according to a new study in mice, led by researchers at Penn State.

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