Spotlight on the Health Sciences

The latest issue of the online magazine ScienceMatters@Berkeley is now available! It contains articles about an earthquake early-warning system proposed by seismologists, investigations into the genetic components of folic acid deficiency, the very first teacher to graduate from the new Cal Teach program, and more! Check out the latest issue here.

On November 20, our talk was given by Dr. Ryan Canolty, and was entitled "The brain’s got rhythm: the role of neuronal oscillations in regulating large-scale brain networks".

What role do neuronal oscillations play in shaping computation and communication in multi-scale brain networks? Somehow, billions of individual nerve cells coordinate their activity so precisely that it results in a single unified event, such as a toddler taking her first steps, an athlete scoring the perfect goal, or a poet find just the right word to express the inexpressible. While complex, the neuronal activity required for perception, cognition, and action occurs efficiently and effortlessly. How does this happen? Accumulating evidence suggests that information is dynamically integrated across multiple spatial and temporal scales within the brain, and that a hierarchy of interacting oscillations may help regulate this multi-scale integration. Like the manual transmission of a car, brain rhythms seem to form an interlocking system ideal for connecting fast events to the slow and the very small to the very large. In this talk, I focus on the relationship linking the activity of single nerve cells to the brain rhythms generated by larger populations. Next, I give a sketch of how this relationship may prove critical for top-down control of functionally related but anatomically-dispersed groups of neurons scattered across the brain. Finally, I conclude with a glimpse of how coordinated global patterns of oscillatory coupling may lead to new clinical applications such as brain-machine interfaces.

On October 16, our talk was given by Prof. David Presti, and was entitled "What Can Neurobiology Say About Mind and Consciousness?".

Our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions - the conscious awareness of our mental processes - is how we experience the world.  How these mental phenomena are related to the cellular and molecular processes of our brain and body is one of the great unanswered questions of contemporary science.  Research in neurobiology has produced vast amounts of knowledge about the structure and function of the brain and a stunningly beautiful picture has emerged of how the molecular and cellular processes in the brain are correlated with behavior.  Still, the actual generation of consciousness remains a deep mystery.  We will address this beauty and this mystery. 

The latest issue of the online magazine ScienceMatters@Berkeley has been published! It contains articles about the work done by UC scientists to learn how it's so easy to hear your own name spoken, what the lives of ancient peoples were like, and how the the many genes implicated in cancer interact. Check out the latest issue here.