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Searching for Autism in our Social Brain
All animals need to know and communicate with their own, so evolution has developed in every brain the ways we all recognize and socialize with each other. But while other brains are social – no other brain is as social, or can do what the human brain can – and as far as science knows […]
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Unlocking the Mysteries of the Brain Through Stem Cell Research
Inside a lab at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, researchers are doing something truly remarkable. They are growing tiny versions of developing human brains in order to study everything from Alzheimer’s disease to the Zika virus. Alysson Muotri is the co-director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Program and leads the team researching […]
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Neanderthal Among Us? Science Meets Fiction
What makes us human is a question that not only science asks, but all disciplines of mind from philosophy to religion to sociology and ethics, and even to storytelling and the arts. Tim Disney’s new movie “William” is about a Neanderthal living in the modern world and forces us to ask about humanness and many […]
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Building the Brain With Alysson Muotri
Inside of each brain, there is the possibility to understand how trillions of neural connections come to sense the world, record memories, create an individual, and shape who you are and who you will become. Can we ever learn how this happens? By using cortical organoids – self organized clusters of neurons generated by stem […]
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Neuroscience, Mini Brains, and Your Health
“All the best models are the ones that you can improve in complexity to get closer and closer to the reality.” The idea of a brain in a dish may sound like science fiction to some but scientists are becoming more and more adept at creating cortical organoids in the lab. The organoids are models […]
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Imagination and Human Origins
Try to remember the first time in your life when you imagined something. It may have been imagining what was behind the door or under the bed, or a fantastic universe of wonders and exciting adventure. As children, our imaginations are furtive and encouraged as ways in which we develop our cognitive capabilities. As we […]
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Aicardi-Goutieres: A Rare Disorder, A Unique Look into the Brain
Using brains-in-a-dish (cortical organoids), the Muotri Lab at UC San Diego has developed a new treatment for Aicardi-Goutieres syndrome. This study not only identified the underlying mechanisms that drive AGS but has also led to surprising revelations about neuroinflammation. Learn how they repurposed HIV antiretroviral drugs to rescue mutated cells and what this research means […]