About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/what-s-new-in-brain-research-at-weizmann/
Jun 10, 2019...
Weizmann Institute researchers from across the disciplines are pursuing topics in neuroscience, approaching this crucial field from a number of angles. That’s because understanding our brains – in both health and disease – benefits everyone on this planet.
From Alzheimer’s to autism, Parkinson’s to mental health, memory to aging and beyond, here are just some of the Institute’s neuroscience advances over just the past year:
Nov 01, 2010... Other than florists and allergy sufferers, most people don't do much sniffing. But scientists in Israel see the ability as a way to assist severely paralyzed people. In the August 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Noam Sobel and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot described the first ever sniff-enabled device: a thin plastic tube with two short prongs that are inserted into the nostrils. The gadget measures nasal pressure and converts it into electrical signals that can be read by a computer. The researchers found that, by sniffing, people could quickly and accurately raise or lower their nasal pressure enough to trigger a command, similar to pressing a button.
May 04, 2018...
Source: Unsplash
Anxiety is the voice in the back of your head that says, “something bad is going to happen.” It’s what keeps you awake at 2 a.m. thinking about something embarrassing you did — five years ago.
Not all introverts have anxiety, and extroverts and ambiverts can struggle with it, too. To be clear, introversion and anxiety aren’t the same thing. Introversion is a preference for calm, minimally stimulating environments, whereas anxiety is a general term for disorders that cause excessive fear, worrying, and nervousness.
Feb 10, 2014...
Schwartz’s research questions assumptions about the central nervous system.
Imagine being able to inhibit or reverse a universal affliction – brain degeneration – and specific diseases or physical injuries that cause its sudden onset. This is precisely what Prof. Michal Schwartz has spent the last two decades studying, with revolutionary results.
Schwartz is far from the stereotypical “mad scientist.” Pretty and petite, with a cascade of curls, she rushes down the hallway of her office and adjacent laboratory more like a student late for a class than an international award-winning powerhouse whose research has turned pre-existing dogma about the central nervous system on its head.
Mar 16, 2016...
Will we ever be able to understand the cacophonous chatter taking place between the 80 million neurons in our brains? Dr. Ofer Yizhar and his group in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Neurobiology have taken a large step in that direction with a new research method that can provide scientists with targeted control over vital parts of the brain’s communications.
Dr. Yizhar works in the relatively new field of optogenetics, in which scientists use genetic engineering and laser light in thin optical fibers to investigate the living brain. With these tools, scientists can modulate and control the activities of nerve circuits in the brain, and thus begin to unravel the networks of links and nodes in the brain’s communications systems.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/immune-system-maintains-brain-health/
Nov 01, 2016...
©ROY SCOTT/GETTY IMAGES
In a dark room in Charlottesville, Virginia, a mouse swims in a small pool, searching for a place to rest. In 12 previous swims, with the help of visual cues and training from an experimenter, the mouse eventually tracked down a platform near the center of the pool. But just a day after its last swim, the animal is spending nearly as much time searching for the platform as it did on its first swim. The discombobulated mouse’s problem? It has no T cells.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/study-finds-autistic-toddlers-brains-out-of-sync/
Jun 22, 2011...
Researchers studying autistic toddlers have discovered their brain activity appears to be out of sync at a very early stage – a finding that sheds light on the biology of the condition and might help in earlier diagnosis.
In research published in the journal Neuron, scientists in Israel used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at the brains of sleeping toddlers and found that certain types of neural activity are disrupted in autistic children, but not in typical children or in others with delayed language development.
Nov 24, 2015...
Source: Georges Biard/Wikimedia Commons
In a recent interview about her upcoming film, Youth, Jane Fonda describes magical peak experiences she's had during the process of filmmaking. The language Fonda uses to describe her most inspired moments as an actress offer valuable clues for better understanding the highest form of “flow,” which I have coined “superfluidity.”
Last week, I wrote a Psychology Today blog post, “Superfluidity” and “Hot Hands” Are Synonymous,” which was inspired by a New Yorker article that examined a period during Bob Dylan’s career when he had a “hot hand,” as represented by a phenomenal streak of creative output during the 1960s.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/video-gallery/prof-nachum-ulanovsky-using-bats-to-light-the-way/
May 04, 2014... This three-minute video tells the story of Weizmann Institute researcher Prof. Nachum Ulanovsky, who studies free-flying bats to explore the brain's ability to work in three dimensions. His work with bats has considerable implications for human neuroscience.
Mar 07, 2016...
Prof. Rony Paz
People suffering from anxiety perceive the world in a fundamentally different way than others, according to a study reported on March 3 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology. The research may help explain why certain people are more prone to anxiety.
The new study shows that people diagnosed with anxiety are less able to distinguish between a neutral, “safe” stimulus (in this case, the sound of a tone) and one that had earlier been associated with gaining or losing money. In other words, when it comes to emotionally charged experiences, they show a behavioral phenomenon known as “over-generalization,” the researchers say.
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