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Neuroscience
Bigger brains are smarter, but not by much
Using a large dataset and controlling for a variety of factors, including sex, age, height, socioeconomic status, and genetic ancestry, Gideon Nave of the Wharton School and Philipp Koellinger of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that people with larger brains rated higher on measures of intelligence, but only accounts for two percent of the variation in smarts.
The world’s oldest nightmare: Understanding sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis has been linked to the supernatural for centuries. Neuroscientists work to uncover the science of REM disorders.
The next frontier of precision medicine: Parkinson’s disease
The Molecular Integration in Neurological Diagnosis (MIND) Initiative is working to understand the nature of Parkinson's disease with molecular-level accuracy, so doctors can treat the root cause.
The psychology of binge-watching
Though binge-watching—and even the way we crave television at all—is a relatively recent phenomenon, the psychology behind why we become consumed in stories is actually a tale as old as time.
To reduce concussions in football, change kickoffs
Research findings support an experimental rule in football that reduced concussions by moving the kickoff line from the 35- to 40-yard line and the touchback line from the 25- to 20-yard line.
What happens to the brain after a traumatic injury?
Two undergrads interning with Penn Medicine’s Ramon Diaz-Arrastia spent the summer looking for biomarkers in the blood of TBI patients, and studying whether the generic form of Viagra might help promote recovery after such an injury.
New center will study the complex genomics within individual cells
Junhyong Kim and James Eberwine are leading a multi-disciplinary team in developing cutting-edge technologies that can assess the genetic material inside individual compartments of single cells. The new Center for Sub-Cellular Genomics aims to revolutionize therapies for diseases such as bipolar disorder, autism, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Finding patterns in a class of neurological disorders
Research from Penn Engineering and the Perelman School of Medicine has found that the shared pattern is misfolded in Fragile X Syndrome, a member of the class of disorders that also includes ALS and Huntington’s disease
People who don’t read the news foresee which articles will go viral
In an upcoming article in the journal Cerebral Cortex, researchers tracked activity in the brain's prefrontal cortex, and found that avid readers of the news had little change in brain activity from story to story, making them less accurate predictors of viral content.
Brain stimulation decreases intent to commit assault
Research from Penn Medicine and the Criminology department shows that using minimally invasive electrical currents on the prefrontal cortex can reduce the desire to carry out such violence and increase the perception that it’s morally wrong.
In the News
Financial Times
How Brain Science Found Its Way into Business School
Wharton professor Michael Platt discussed the effect of neuroscience on the “future of business education.”
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Scicasts
'Epigenetic Landscape' Is Protective in Normal Aging, Impaired in Alzheimer's Disease, Says Study
Shelley Berger, Nancy Bonini, and Brad Johnson, of the Perelman School of Medicine co-authored a study profiling the “epigenetic landscape” of human brains with Alzheimer’s disease.
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