This is Lesson One in the Implicit Bias Video Series from BruinX, the research and development unit within the University of California, Los Angeles's Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. This video discusses schemas, which are mental short-cuts that help us navigate the world around us.

Inner speech refers to the silent production of language in one’s mind. As a purely mental action without obvious physical manifestations, inner speech has been notoriously difficult to quantify. Inner speech is thought to be closely related to overt speech. Overt speech has been consistently shown to elicit reduced auditory-evoked potentials compared to externally-generated speech (a phenomenon known as speaking-induced suppression), as well as changes in oscillatory activity in the gamma and theta frequency bands. Given the functional similarities between inner and overt speech, the present study used a novel experimental protocol to investigate whether these metrics can be used to distinguish the content of a person’s inner speech. Healthy control participants (n = 129) produced an inner syllable at a precisely specified time. An audible syllable was concurrently presented which either matched or mismatched the content of the inner syllable. The N1 component of the auditory evoked potential was suppress...

Don’t be overwhelmed by writing your personal statement. By following these six tips, you can successfully tell your story and explain why you’re an excellent fit for the particular graduate school program.

There are many reasons to have undergraduates join your lab for the summer, including mentoring practice for postdocs and a chance to guide the upcoming generation of researchers.

The anterior hypothalamic area (AHA) is a key brain region for orchestrating defensive behaviors. Using in vivo calcium imaging in mice, we observed that AHA neuronal activity increases during foot shock delivery and foot-shock associated auditory cues. We found that following shock-induced increases in AHA activity, a decrease in activity coincides with the onset of grooming behavior. Next, we optogenetically activated the projections from the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) to the AHA and observed that photoactivation of the VMH→AHA pathway drives avoidance. Interestingly, repetitive grooming behavior occurs following cessation of stimulation. To identify changes in brain-wide activity patterns that occur due to optogenetic VMH→AHA stimulation, we combined optogenetic stimulation with positron emission tomography (PET) based metabolic mapping. This approach revealed the amygdala as a downstream area activated by the stimulation of this pathway. Our findings show that the rise and fall of AHA neuronal act...

Material below is adapted from the SfN Short Course, Correlating Cellular Morphology, Physiology, and Gene Expression Using Patch-seq, by Cathryn R. Cadwell, PhD, and Andreas S. Tolias, PhD. Short Courses are day-long scientific trainings on emerging neuroscience topics and research techniques held just prior to SfN’s annual meeting. In the quest to understand the brain, gathering information about the ways neurons communicate is essential. Coupling cell type analysis with electrophysiological measurements obtained through patch-clamping, a host of techniques that measure electrical activity in neurons, has the potential to reveal new insights about how specific neuronal cell types communicate, and thus how the brain works.

The cerebral cortex is the seat of higher cognitive functions such as learning, memory, planning, language acquisition, attention, and consciousness.

Inspired by her research on the neurobiology of language, Flora Vanlangendonck created a short video for SfN’s Brain Awareness Video Contest to explain how the brain processes language and the historical discoveries behind our current understanding of it.

Genetic sequencing technologies allow researchers to characterize the diversity of the human genome as well as the causes of many diseases and disorders.

Discovering what cells give rise to others — in other words, tracing cell lineage — has been a goal of biologists for years.