Lab News
Rice labs tapped for brain research by UK funding agency with multimillion-dollar awards
Four Rice University research groups are part of an inaugural cohort of 18 projects funded by the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) ⎯ a United Kingdom government agency inspired by the United States’ Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ⎯ to unlock cutting-edge brain-interfacing technologies.
New insights into sleep uncover key mechanisms related to cognitive function
The research, published in Science, reveals how NREM sleep — the lighter sleep one experiences when taking a nap, for example — fosters brain synchronization and enhances information encoding, shedding new light on this sleep stage. The researchers replicated these effects through invasive stimulation, suggesting promising possibilities for future neuromodulation therapies in humans. The implications of this discovery potentially pave the way for innovative treatments for sleep disorders and even methods to enhance cognitive and behavioral performance.
Live from the brain: Visual cues inform decision to cooperate
By combining behavioral and wireless eye tracking and neural monitoring, a team of Rice University scientists and collaborators studied how pairs of freely moving macaques interacting in a naturalistic setting use visual cues to guide complex, goal-oriented cooperative behavior. The study published in Nature offers first evidence that the part of the brain that processes visual information ⎯ the visual cortex ⎯ plays an active role in social behavior by providing an executive area ⎯ the prefrontal cortex ⎯ with the signals necessary to generate the decision to cooperate.
The brain’s balance between plasticity and stability
How does the human brain maintain stability while constantly bombarded with sensory information? “If the brain changes every time it experiences something new, how are we able to maintain a stable representation of the environment?” asked Valentin Dragoi, professor of electrical and computer engineering and core faculty member of the Neuroengineering Initiative at Rice. Dragoi and his colleagues have attempted to answer such questions in a recent paper published in Nature Neuroscience, “Rapid compensatory plasticity revealed by dynamic correlated activity in monkeys in vivo.”
Debes and Dragoi Published in Science
Recent research from the lab of Valentin Dragoi, PhD, Rochelle and Max Levitt Distinguished Professor in the Neurosciences, revealing for the first time that cortical feedback projections carry attentional signals to individual neurons and cell populations in the visual cortex, has been published in Science as a research article.
Research from Dragoi lab on cortical adaptation published in Nature Communications
Recent research from the lab of Valentin Dragoi, PhD, Rochelle and Max Levit Distinguished Professor in the Neurosciences, on the adaptive capacity of visual cortical populations has been published in the January edition of Nature Communications.
Dr. Dragoi and the Dragoi Lab Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Recent research from the lab of Valentin Dragoi, PhD has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study found that when animals are awake, but passive, or even when they performed a task, optogenetically-evoked electrical signals were strong, but remained local to the stimulated neural population.
Research in Dragoi lab on cortical populations published in Neuron
Research from the lab of Valentin Dragoi, PhD, Rochelle and Max Levit Distinguished Professor in the Neurosciences, studying neuronal interactions in visual and prefrontal cortical areas has been published in Neuron. First author for the paper, titled “High-order interaction explain the collective behavior of cortical populations in executive but not sensory areas,” is Mircea Chelaru, PhD. Co-authors include Sarah Eagleman, PhD; Ariana Andrei, PhD; Russel Milton; and Natasha Kharas, MD, PhD.
Research on color-tuned neurons published in Science Advances
New research from the lab of Valentin Dragoi, PhD, on how the brain extracts and represents color information has been published in the February edition of Science Advances. “Color represents an integral component of the visual input to the brain,” the paper’s authors write. “Higher vertebrates process color to make important decisions regarding food gathering, avoiding predators, and engaging in social interactions.”