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 future of humanity.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-march-2007/
Mar 26, 2007... Breaking down bone is a tough job. Yet, our bones undergo remodeling every day of our lives, as old material is cleared away so that new bone can form. In diseases such as osteoporosis, an imbalance in this process is responsible for the characteristic bone loss. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, which recently appeared in the on-line journal PLoS ONE, has revealed, in unprecedented detail, how the roving cells whose job is to digest bone seal off their work area as they get down to business.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/immune-system-may-also-help-brain/
Jan 17, 2006...
Scientists have surprising new evidence that the immune system, best known for protecting the body against pathogens, also plays a key role in the brain's ability to grow new neurons in adulthood.
If true, boosting the immune system may be one way to protect against age-associated learning and memory problems, said Michal Schwartz, lead author of a paper on the research published this month in Nature Neuroscience.
Apr 19, 2013...
An Egyptian fruit bat flies in an abandoned quarry near the village of Mammari, west of Nicosia, in March 2007. Alex Mita / AFP - Getty Images file
At a lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, fruit bats in a roomy cage flew circles around a metal rig that roughly resembles a tree. Electrodes on their head recorded and wirelessly transmitted a map of the electrical activity in their brain. Bats, like birds, are deviously good at finding their way over long distances. Egyptian fruit bats will fly up to a hundred kilometers from their roosting cave to visit a favorite fruit tree. By studying the brain activity, researchers hoped to uncover clues about how many mammals, not just bats, know where they are — how high up they are when they peek out of a 10th-story window, how far they need to leap so they can make it to the next branch, or how to make back it home once they’ve reached their favorite tree.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/the-ins-and-outs-of-acetylcholine/
Feb 13, 2000...
A team of scientists from the Weizmann Institute and France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) has recently shown that the neurotransmitter acetylcholine plays a double role in learning and memory.
While prior studies had already demonstrated that adding acetlycholine to neuronal junctions during learning affects information reception and storage, subsequent testing of the cell's ability to retrieve the information produced inconsistent results. The findings ranged from significant or slight improvement following acetylcholine application, to the lack of any learning enhancement whatsoever.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/bats-turn-up-the-volume-to-find-food-amid-clutter/
Sep 19, 2011...
An Egyptian fruit bat in a laboratory experiment. Research indicates that the bats adjust their sonar system to distinguish food from obstacles. Nachum Ulanovsky
Fruit bats make a clicking sound with their tongues to help themnavigate their way to the fruits they feed on. The clicking produces afan–shaped sonar beam that bounces off an object and returns an echo tothe bat.
Now scientists are reporting that the bats have more control over these echolocation abilities than previously thought.
Jan 28, 2013...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—January 28, 2013—The European Commission has officially announced the selection of the Human Brain Project (HBP) as one of its two Future Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship projects. The new project will federate European efforts to address one of the greatest challenges of modern science: understanding the human brain.
The goal of the Human Brain Project: Pull together all our existing knowledge about the human brain and reconstruct the brain, piece by piece, in supercomputer-based models and simulations. Such models offer the prospect of a new understanding of the human brain and the diseases that affect it, as well as advancing completely new computing and robotic technologies. The European Commission supported this vision, announcing that it has selected the HBP as one of two projects to be funded through the new FET Flagship Program, which supports highly innovative technology.
Oct 30, 2019...
Pairs of face images that elicited similar (left column) and different (right column) neuronal activation patterns. Each bar shows the response of one electrode to the face in the photo; the higher the bar and the lighter the red, the stronger the response
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—October 30, 2019—Our brains are so primed to recognize faces – or to tell people apart – that we rarely even stop to think about it, but what happens in the brain when it engages in such recognition is still far from understood. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have shed new light on this issue. They found a striking similarity between the way in which faces are encoded in the brain and successfully performing artificial intelligence (AI) systems known as deep neural networks.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/four-israeli-women-of-note/
Oct 10, 2006...
Dr. Michal Schwartz, one of Israel’s leading researchers and a senior neurobiologist at Rehovot’s Weizmann Institute of Science, has made such important scientific discoveries that Superman even dropped by to see what she was up to.
The late actor Christopher Reeves, who starred in the Superman movies and became a quadriplegic after a spinal cord injury, came to her lab in 2003. Previously, Schwartz—a leading expert in injury to the central nervous system (CNS)—had gone to his home to report on her experimental technique for treating spinal cord injuries. “I was a very good friend of his,” she recalls sadly. “He was amazed by the high quality of science in Israel and researchers’ urge to be daring.”
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/neural-activity-in-bats-measured-in-flight/
Apr 18, 2013... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—April 18, 2013—Animals navigate and orient themselves to survive — to find food and shelter or avoid predators, for example. Research conducted by Dr. Nachum Ulanovsky and research student Michael Yartsev of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Neurobiology, published today in Science, reveals for the first time how three-dimensional (3D) volumetric space is perceived in mammalian brains. The research was conducted using a unique miniaturized neural-telemetry system developed especially for this task, which enabled the measurement of single brain cells during flight.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-june-2012/
Jun 12, 2012... Financial loss can lead to irrational behavior. Now, research by Weizmann Institute scientists reveals that the effects of loss go even deeper: loss can compromise our early perception and interfere with our grasp of the true situation. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, may also have implications for our understanding of the neurological mechanisms underlying post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
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