Human Health

“This table feels hard,” said Assistant Professor Rishidev Chaudhuri, who sat in his office at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience. “That’s something that emerges at the collective population level.”

How individual particles come together to spontaneously create new structures is a question pondered by many physicists. The concept underlying that question—collective behavior—also intrigues neuroscientists.

This article originally appeared on the Spectrum site.

Exposure to infection in utero may speed up the expression of many genes linked to autism — and hasten changes in brain anatomy.

The results are in mice but hint at how infections during pregnancy may contribute to autism.

Research about how to measure healthy brain aging is still evolving – and UC Davis is leading the charge, focusing on brain health throughout an individual’s lifespan. 

Wilsaan Joiner, PhD, recently joined the UC Davis neuroscience community as an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and School of Medicine’s Department of Neurology. Joiner is particularly interested in how sensory inputs guide our motor actions and vice versa; for example, how ballet dancers possess a precise sense of where their bodies are in space and how they make very fine body movements.

We know instinctively that our experiences shape the way we learn. If we are highly familiar with a particular task, like cooking for example, learning a new recipe is much easier than it was when we were a novice. New research from the University of California, Davis, shows that experience also changes the way our neurons become plastic and form new memories.  

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As our bodies age, we all face some decline in our senses, and among the senses most susceptible to deterioration is hearing.

Hearing loss is a substantial problem for society. It’s the third most common physical condition after arthritis and heart disease and about 30 percent of adults between ages 65 and 74 and nearly half of people over 75 experience some difficulty hearing.  It’s a social problem, one that can lead to isolation and depression.

If you're worried about your dwindling attention span or what might happen to your brain as you get older, consider picking up meditation.

How can universities best prepare students for a career in neuroscience? Ask Professor Mark Goldman, Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and the Center for Neuroscience, and he’ll tell you it’s time to rethink the traditional biology curriculum. To unravel complex systems like the brain, students need advanced training in quantitative and computational techniques.

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