Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
•••

Cory Inman

An exceptional electrical thrill ride #CNS2018

A recent paper in Neuropsychologia got a lot of attention on Twitter and at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting in Boston over the weekend. It discusses what can happen when the amygdala, a region of the brain known for regulating emotional responses, receives direct electrical stimulation. A thrill ride – but for only one study participant. Two of nine people noticed the electrical stimulation. One individual reported (a video is included in the paper):

“It was, um, it was terrifying, it was just…it was like I was about to get attacked by a dog. Like the moment, like someone unleashes a dog on you, and it’s just like it’s so close…

He also spontaneously reported “this is fun.” He further explained that he could distinguish feelings in his body that would normally be associated with fear recognized and the absence of an actual threat, making the experience “fun”.

But wait, why were Emory neuroscientists Cory Inman, Jon Willie and Stephan Hamann and colleagues doing this? Read more

Posted on March 29, 2018 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Give a zap to Emory brain research for #STATMadness

Next week, we will be asking the Emory research community to support Emory’s entry in a contest. It’s like “Battle of the Bands.” Whoever gets the loudest cheers wins. We have some intriguing neuroscience research. Please help!

STAT Madness is a “March Madness” style bracket competition, but with biomedical research advances as competitors. Universities or research institutes nominate their champions, research that was published the previous year.

Our entry for 2018:

Direct amygdala stimulation can enhance human memory

The findings, from Cory Inman, Jon Willie and colleagues from the Department of Neurosurgery and Joe Manns from Psychology, were the first published example of electrical brain stimulation in humans giving an event-specific boost to memory lasting overnight. The research was conducted with epilepsy patients undergoing an invasive procedure for seizure diagnosis. However, the technology could one day be incorporated into a device aimed at helping those with memory impairments, such as people with traumatic brain injury or neurodegenerative diseases.

Extra note: you may have seen similar neuroscience research in a recent Nature Communications paper, which was described in the New York Times. Cory Inman had some comments below — he and neurosurgeon Robert Gross were co-authors:

The localization to the left lateral temporal cortex was interesting, because it hadn’t been identified as a region that modulates episodic or hippocampus-dependent memory. [The Emory authors stimulated the amygdala.] The more recent paper found a similar size of memory enhancement, with a slightly different and harder memory task of free recall, using “closed-loop” stimulation based on whether the brain is in a ‘bad’ encoding state. It’s possible that closed-loop stimulation could be used with the amygdala as well. 

Emory’s first opponoent is University of California, San Francisco. We are about half way down on the right side of the bracket.

As far as voting, you can fill out a whole bracket or you can just vote for Emory, along with other places you may feel an allegiance to. The contest will go several rounds. The first round begins on February 26. If Emory advances, then people will be able to continue voting for us starting March 2.

At the moment, you can sign up to be reminded to vote with an email address at:
https://signup.statnews.com/stat-madness

Starting Monday, February 26, you can follow the 2018 STAT Madness bracket and vote here:
https://www.statnews.com/feature/stat-madness/bracket/

Please share on social media using the hashtag #statmadness2018.

STAT is a life sciences-focused news site, launched in 2015 by the owner of the Boston Globe. It covers medical research and biotech nationally and internationally. Emory took part in 2017’s contest, with Tab Ansari’s groundbreaking work on SIV remission, a collaboration with Tony Fauci’s lab at NIAID.

 

 

Posted on February 22, 2018 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment