Congrats Wan Chen
Wan Chen Lin passed her qualifying exam! Congratulations Wan Chen!
Wan Chen Lin Wins Poster Award at Flux
In September many of us attended the Flux Congress on brain development in Portland. Wan Chen Lin won a poster award. David Piekarski and Wan Chen Lin also won travel awards. Congratulations David and Wan Chen! Next year Flux will be in Berlin.
New Paper by Piekarski & Boivin
David Piekarski and Josiah Boivin have a new paper published in Current Biology that shows organizational effects of ovarian hormones on the maturation of inhibitory neurotransmission in the mouse frontal cortex during puberty.
Congratulations Dr. Boivin
Josiah Boivin successfully defended his PhD thesis! Congratulations Joe! He will move on to postdoc at MIT with the Nedivi lab
Faculty Forum: Characterizing Effects of Inequality on Brain Development & Strengthening Resilience against Adversity
UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor for Research is holding a faculty forum on Characterizing Effects of Inequality on Brain Development & Strengthening Resilience against Adversity on Tuesday, October 4th at the Faculty Club. The event is convened by Linda Wilbrecht, Silvia Bunge, Daniela Kaufer, Julianna Deardorff, and Lance Kriegsfeld .
Wilbrecht in Conversation with Tom Stoppard and Carey Perloff
On Monday, October 3rd, Linda Wilbrecht will join Tom Stoppard and Carey Perloff in conversation at the ACT Theater.
Tom Stoppard and Carey Perloff—In Conversation
Monday, October 3, 7 p.m.
A.C.T.’s Geary Theater
Tony, Academy, and Olivier Award winner Tom Stoppard will join A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff “In Conversation” at The Geary Theater where they will discuss their decades-long collaboration and why Stoppard has long referred to A.C.T. as his “American home.” They will be joined on stage by neuroscientist Linda Wilbrecht from the University of California, Berkeley.
Lung-Hao Tai’s collaborative work with Bo Li lab recently published
Lung-Hao Tai’s collaborative work with the Bo Li lab was recently published as: Marcus Stephenson-Jones, Kai Yu, Sandra Ahrens, Jason M. Tucciarone, Aile N. van Huijstee, Luis A. Mejia, Mario A. Penzo, Lung-Hao Tai, Linda Wilbrecht, Bo Li, A basal ganglia circuit for evaluating action outcomes, Nature, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature19845 (2016).
David Piekarski Receives New Investigator Award at SBN
David Piekarski was recently granted the New Investigator Award at the 2016 Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (SBN) meeting in Montreal.
Gopnik on Maternal Separation
My colleague Professor Alison Gopnik discusses the Wilbrecht Lab’s work in the Wall Street Journal this week. Gopnik’s article covers two experiments from the Lab–our 2011 paper on juvenile mice and reversal learning, and our 2015 maternal separation and flexibility paper.
Young Mice, Like Children, Can Grow Up Too Fast
Is it good to grow up? We often act as if children should develop into adults as quickly as possible. More and more we urge our children to race to the next level, leap over the next hurdle, make it to the next grade as fast as they can. But new brain studies suggest that it may not be good to grow up so fast. The neuroscientist Linda Wilbrecht at my own school, the University of California, Berkeley, and her collaborators recently reported that early stress makes babies, at least baby mice, grow up too soon.
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News Coverage on Nature Comms Article
Christopher Bergland, How Does Your Brain Learn Through Trial and Error? Problem-solving and critical thinking can rewire the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), Psychology Today, Mar. 6, 2016.
In a groundbreaking discovery, neurocientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have captured brain images of active learning in real-time by photographing the brains of mice as they learn how-to problem solve through trial and error.
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Yasmin Anwar, Scientists tap the smarts of mice, capture problem-solving in action, UC Berkeley Press Release, March 7, 2016.