UCLA Brain Research Institute

Brain Section

Image of the month

Section through a mouse brain, injected with Adenoviral vectors encoding a model antigen (influenza hemagglutinin) and an immunostimulatory cytokine. Numerous T cells (immunolabeled for CD3, green), not normally present in the brain, line the blood vessels (laminin, pink), and invade the surrounding tissue, including white matter bundles (myelin basic protein, coffee color).

Image by Nicholas Sanderson from the Castro/Lowenstein Laboratory

BRI member Dr. William Yang publishes breakthrough research giving those with Huntington's Disease hope.

Image of the Huntington Brain, courtesy of William Yang

PAMELA KENNEDY, PhD, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY

Pamela Kennedy, PhD, comes to the BRI from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. As a doctoral student, she studied how memory and motivational states interact to guide goal directed behavior. As a postdoctoral researcher, she investigated the molecular changes that affect how neurons communicate.

At UCLA, Dr. Kennedy plans to "research reward circuitry and memory systems, and the process through which a habit system versus an episodic system takes hold of behavior. This should shed light on how communication is altered between different parts of the brain during the process of addiction.”

In the news

Preliminary clinical trial shows great promise for new multiple sclerosis treatment

BRI member, Dr. Rhonda Voskuhl shows that combining the female hormone, estrial, with Copaxone, a medication currently used to treat multiple sclerosis, reduces the relapse rate of MS by nearly 50 percent after only one year of treatment.

Courtesy of the UCLA Newsroom

NSIDP

The Interdepartmental Program for Neuroscience

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Upcoming Events

July 24, 2014
BRI-SURE Special Seminar: "What's new in DNA replication? Identifying novel replication orgin sequences in human cells."
Presented by Melvenia M. Martin, PhD. Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Grambling State University, Grambling LA.
11:00am - 12:00pm. Gonda, 1357 (First floor conference room).
For more information, contact Kathy Shenassa (kathy.shenassa@ucla.edu).

July 28, 2014
UCLA/Semel NeuroImaging Training Program Special Public Lecture: "Mapping perceptual cognitive representations across the human cerebral cortex."
Presented by Jack Gallant, PhD. Professor of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley.
11:00am - 12:00pm. CHS 23-105.
For more information, contact Mark Cohen, PhD (mscohen@ucla.edu).