Sophie Fessl, Ph.D.
After completing her Ph.D., Sophie Fessl swapped her favorite neuroscience model, the fruit fly, for pen and paper. Sophie is a freelance science writer based in Vienna, Austria.
It’s the Power of Love—in Voles
Q&A with Zoe Donaldson, Ph.D.What is attachment and how does it form? By imaging individual cells in the brains of prairie voles, Dana Foundation Grantee Zoe Donaldson's lab has identified a neural network that signals how strong their preference for their partner is.
Exploring a Potential New Therapy for Fatal Canavan Disease
Q&A with David Pleasure, M.D.While others try to thin out the overabundance of an amino acid that critically damages the axons in infants with Canavan disease, Dana Foundation grantee David Pleasure aims to prevent the buildup itself.
Tinnitus, The Troublemaker in Your Brain
There is still no cure for tinnitus, but a new model suggests how the mystery ringing could arise so quickly.
The Hidden Neuroscience of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo was appreciated in his day for his art, music, and engineering feats, but his findings about the brain went largely unheralded, because his notes and detailed anatomical drawings went unpublished for centuries.
What Does it Mean When What Looks Like Alzheimer’s Isn’t Alzheimer’s?
Patients with LATE experience symptoms that match those of Alzheimer’s disease, but their brains do not show Alzheimer’s hallmarks.
How our Brains Respond to Texture
New research shows that rich neural activity is responsible for the myriad textures we sense every day.
Turning Thoughts into Spoken Words
Technology to translate thoughts into speech would help patients who cannot speak regain their ability to communicate. Three studies describe efforts towards such brain-computer interfaces.
Seeing Through the Haze of Cannabis Research on Epilepsy
he FDA recently approved a solution containing cannabidiol, an ingredient of cannabis, for treating childhood epilepsy. Has it lived up to expectations?
The End Comes as a Wave
Starved of oxygen, neurons lose their proper electrical charge when we die and a wave of electrochemical energy spreads through the brain. Researchers in Berlin and Cincinnati have, for the first time, recorded such brain tsunamis in dying patients, and also in patients with survivable brain damage, such as brain hemorrhages, suggesting that doctors look for this pattern and act quickly when they see it to save endangered neurons.