TDLC at the 43rd annual meeting of
the Society for Neuroscience (SfN)

The Annual SfN Neuroscience Meeting is the largest neuroscience meeting in the nation. Over 30,000 colleagues from more than 80 countries gather to discuss global neuroscience. Many TDLC investigators and trainees attended this year's event in San Diego on November 9-13, 2013. More

TDLC Summer Internships

TDLC is in a key position to offer training to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students through various internship programs. Andrea Chiba recently welcomed three summer interns – Robert Moore, Vivian Phillips, and Andrea Elser – who eagerly share details of their experience.  Scientist Laleh Quinn, who is leading the team's project, has been an invaluable mentor to the interns. More

Presidential Medal of Freedom to be Awarded to Two UC San Diego Professors (8/9/13)

Sally Ride, former professor emeritus in physics and first woman in space, will be honored, posthumously, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. This news is especially exciting for TDLC, as Sally Ride founded and led the educational company, Sally Ride Science, which officially joined TDLC as a corporate partner this year. Mario Molina, distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego, will also receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. More about the Awards

What is the interaction between attention and learning? 

TDLC investigator Gedeon Deak and co-organizers Rachel Wu and Richard Aslin (both University of Rochester) and Rebecca Nako (University of London) addressed this important question in the recent event: The “Learning to Attend, Attending to Learn Workshop: Neurological, Behavioral, and Computational Perspectives.”  The aim of this gathering, held in San Diego on Nov. 6-7, 2013, was "to encourage cross-talk among researchers from different fields asking the same questions." This interdisciplinary approach provided critical insights and opportunities for interaction and collaboration. 

From the Lab to the Classroom: Continuing the Discussion

The Distinguished Educator Advisory Panel - San Diego, a component of The Educator Network, met on September 13 with continued discussion of exploring how translation from the science laboratory to the classroom can be accomplished.  Using the David Daniels Model of Steps to Translation, the group discussed with Ryan Gallagher and Paula Tallal, a research study, “Social/emotional function, academic skills, and brain maturation during adolescence: Focus on adaptive interventions,” that took place three years ago with Ryan’s students. More

Terry Sejnowski featured in recent articles on the BRAIN Initiative:

A public hearing, "A Mindful Approach to the BRAIN Initiative," was held Oct. 4, 2013, at UC San Diego, to explore the state's role in supporting the BRAIN Initiative, first unveiled by the Obama Administration in April 2013. TDLC's Dr. Terry Sejnowski attended the event, along with Senate Majority Leader Ellen M. Corbett, Ralph Greenspan (head of the recently established Center for Brain Activity Mapping (CBAM)), and UCSD Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. More 

National Neuroscience Effort Zooms In On Brain Circuits
(KPBS, Sept. 17, 2013)
The article also links to the nine broad research priorities of the U.S. brain-mapping initiative, made by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which were released on September 16, 2013. More

 Accelerating Brain Research with Supercomputers 
(August 5, 2013, HPC Wire) 

 Decoded: How brain remains focused on long-term goals 
(August 5, 2013, FirstPost)

TDLC's Howard Poizner and Team are Featured in Recent News!

A study by Dr. Poizner and colleagues will be featured on the cover of Neuroscience (Dec 16th issue): Patients with Parkinson's disease show impaired online control and reduced eye-hand span when reaching to grasp objects (Neuroscience, 2013, 254, 205-221). Authors: Lukos, J., Hernandez, M., Tunik, E., Hillyard, S., and Poizner, H.

In the San Diego Union Tribune:
Hot on the trail of Parkinson's (Sept. 2013)
Dr. Poizner discusses his Parkinson's research program with Gary Robbins of the U-T San Diego.

On the cover of the August issue of the journal Neuroscience: Reaching to kinesthetically defined targets in Parkinson's disease: Effects of deep brain stimulation therapy

In The Journal of Neuroscience (Sept. 18, 2013): Human Cortical θ During Free Exploration Encodes Space and Predicts Subsequent Memory

Poizner Lab Receives Grant from ONR (Sept. 2013)
Dr. Howard Poizner recently received an equipment grant ($500k) from ONR, entitled, 'Hybrid Optical-Electrical Brain Imaging of Multiple Agents Acting in Dynamic Environments.'  The grant will enable the Poizner Lab/Brain Dynamics-Motion Capture Lab to extend their capabilities in simultaneously recording brain activity and movement in complex environments.

Using Music to Close the Academic Gap

TDLC Investigator John Iversen is featured a recent article in The Atlantic (Oct. 9), which discusses the SIMPHONY project and its goal to study the impact of intense music ensemble training on the brain development of underserved children in the Chula Vista school district. More

Learning to Solve Problems

It may not be surprising to know that when faced with a problem, adults employ different methods to solve it. But now a tight-knit group of TDLC researchers is uncovering the emergence at young ages of the development and individual differences in problem solving.

The ongoing project is led by San Diego State's Judy Reilly, working together with collaborators Marian Bartlett and Gwen Littlewort, UC San Diego, and Zewelangi Serpell, Virginia Commonwealth University. In two years and counting, these women of science have determined that style differences stem from cognitive, social and biological differences and reflect independent developmental trajectories, In other words, just as kids grow differently in other aspects, so do their problem-solving skills develop.

Study finds a patchwork of genetic variation in the brain
TDLC Investigator Fred Gage was part of a research team at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies that used single-cell sequencing to show that "the genomic structures of individual neurons differ from each other even more than expected." Dr. Gage explains, "Contrary to what we once thought, the genetic makeup of neurons in the brain aren't identical, but are made up of a patchwork of DNA," The findings were published Nov. 1 in Science. More

Publications by Gedeon Deak and TDLC Trainees

• Several recent publications from the Cognitive Development Lab at UCSD, directed by investigator Gedeon Deak, were co-authored by TDLC trainees Kaya de Barbaro and Marybel Robledo. The papers describe findings and methods relating infants' temporal processing of social and non-social information to the development of language and communication skills. Click here to learn more about the publications
  
  
• TDLC's Gedeon Deák featured in the UC San Diego Triton Alumni Magazine (Sept. 2013)
  In a recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (2013), TDLC investigator Gedeon Deák and a Stanford colleague in pediatrics (Toney) show that young children “learn pictogram associations or facts as quickly or more quickly than they learn words. This challenges the assumption of developmental psychologists and lay-people alike that children are 'little sponges' for learning words and language."
  The publication Triton article
  
  

Preterm Babies at Risk for Later Cognitive Difficulties (8/14/13)

A $3 million NIH grant was recently awarded to researchers at UC San Diego to study the impact of preterm birth on early cognitive development and academic measures. TDLC investigators Terry Jernigan, Tim Brown and Judy Reilly are part of this multidisciplinary team of investigators. They will utilize MRI imaging techniques to study links between affected brain areas and pathways and levels of performance on a set of neurocognitive and math functions. More