Dr. David Linden, primary member of the Neuroscience Department, contributes an article to the magazine Aeon about touch.  In this entertaining and informative article, he discusses why certain parts of the body are more pleasurable to the touch than others. 

Sexual sensation, What makes touch on some parts of the body erotic but not others? Cutting-edge biologists are arriving at new answers, by David Linden
https://aeon.co/essays/what-explains-the-variations-in-sexual-sensation-between-us

A new study in Nature Neuroscience by Dr. Jim Knierim and Dr. Noah Cowan investigate navigation without landmarks.  Dr. Knierim is a Primary Neuroscience faculty member at the Mind Brain Institute and Dr. Cowan is a facullty member in Mechanical Engineering. 

Read the full story in Hub here:  https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/06/27/brains-navigate-without-landmarks/

Article in Nature Neuroscience: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01681-9.epdf

Congratulations to Dr. Patricia Janak, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and PBS, who was named a AAAS Fellow!  Also named as AAAS Fellows are Dr. Akira Sawa and Dr. Rejji Kuruvilla, who hold secondary faculty appointments in the Neuroscience Department.   Congrats!!!!

Dr. Huganir's latest research on SynGAP appears in the latest issue of Science! This vital synaptic protein has an additional surpising role as a scaffold to regulate PSD-95 availability.  Check it out!

Congratulations to Dr. Karina Chaudhari for winning the 2023 DuBose Postdoctoral Research Scholar Award!  Dr. Chaudhari is a Postdoc in Dr. Alex Kolodkin's lab studying direction selective visual circuits.  

Dr. David Linden talks with Dr. Andrew Huberman about everything from sensory touch, to sleep paralysis, to death and religion.  Check out the full interview now on Youtube:  https://youtu.be/29n0WG317tM 

Source: https://hubermanlab.com/dr-david-linden-life-death-and-the-neuroscience-of-your-unique-experience/

Congratulations to Dr. Leah Elias for being awarded a 2023 Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship!  Dr. Elias is a Postdoc in Dr. Seth Blackshaw's lab in the Department of Neuroscience.  

Excerpt from Jane Coffin Childs Press Release:

The Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research Names its 2023 Fellows

Twenty-seven exceptional postdoctoral fellows selected as awardees to esteemed fellowship program in biomedical research.

Fellows are funded for a three-year term and receive flexible stipend support.

“The Jane Coffin Childs Fund welcomes the 2023 cohort of Fellows to our distinguished network of scientists around the world and are proud to be able to advance the careers of these exceptional individuals.”  said Anita Pepper, Ph.D., the JCC’s executive director.

Congratulations to Dr. Amy Bastian, primary member of the Neuroscience Department and Chief Science Officer at the Kennedy Kreiger Institute, for her election to the National Academy of Sciences!  

Check out Dr. Linden's recent guest essay opinion piece in the New York Times.  He discusses neuroscience, cancer, and the potential healing powers of the mind.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/opinion/cancer-brain-mind-body.html

Congratulations to Dr. Xinzhong Dong, primary faculty member in the Neuroscience Department, for his election into the 2022 class of fellows in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  

The 2022 class of fellows will receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (representing science and engineering, respectively) to commemorate their election and will be celebrated in Washington, D.C., in summer 2023. They will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of Science in February 2023.

Solomon Snyder, distinguished Professor of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine officially retired after more than 55 years of service to the Johns Hopkins community. 

Thank you Sol for your vision and commitment to starting and building the Department of Neuroscience! 

Congratulations to Dr. Richard Huganir, Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Department, for being awarded the Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience in 2022. He was honored with this award at the Society for Neuroscience meeting November 14th, 2022. 

Congratulations to Dr. Alex Kolodkin, Professor of Neuroscience, for being elected to the National Academy of Sciences!

Link to the announcement. 

Dr. Solange Brown, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, has been selected as the recipient of the 2022 Hamilton Smith Award for Innovative Research in the Institute for Basic Biomedical Science (IBBS) at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. 

The Hamilton Smith award recognizes and advances innovative research by early career faculty members in the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences by providing them with funding to pursue their most creative ideas.

The 2022 Hamilton Smith Award for Innovative Research 
is being presented to:
Dr. Solange Brown
Associate Professor Department of Neuroscience 

Dr. Brown’s research focuses on the development and function of neural circuits and the behaviors that they control in the mammalian brain.  Dr. Brown and her students have defined the cellular and circuit organization of layer 6 of the cerebral cortex, showing how inhibitory interneurons integrate thalamic and local synaptic inputs.   More recently, the Brown laboratory has shown, by recording neural activity and by chemogenetic silencing in awake and behaving mice, that the claustrum, a subcortical nucleus with extensive connections to the neocortex, plays an important role in selecting appropriate motor actions.

Congratulations to Thomas Burnett (graduate student in the O'Connor/Nielsen lab) and Gian Molina-Castro (graduate student in the Bergles lab) for being inducted into the Johns Hopkins University 2022 class of the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society!  Only 5 graduate students from all of Johns Hopkins were chosen for this prestigious honor! 

Thomas and Gian will be officially inducted at the national ceremony at the National Bouchet Honor Society Induction Ceremony and Conference hosted by Yale University (this year virtually), on April 7-8, 2022.

Johns Hopkins will have an induction ceremony with the JHU President and Provost on May 17th 2022. 

Dr. David Linden, primary member of the Neuroscience Department, writes candidly in The Atlantic about his cancer diagnosis, and how this altered his perspective of the mind. The article is written with Dr. Linden's typical humor and insights about life and neuroscience. 

As Dr. Linden himself says "It’s not actually quite as much of a big, bad bummer as the title would suggest.  Please do give it a look."

Link to the article in The Atlantic:  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/terminal-cancer-neuroscientist-prepares-death/621114/

 Also hear Dr. Linden on the January 17th episode of Here & Now on NPR. 
 Dr. Linden's segment starts at 10:54: https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1073614138/1073646872

Congratulations to Dr. Alex Kolodkin, a primary member in the Neuroscience Department, for being awarded a Research to End Blindness Stein Innovation Award!

The Stein Award from the RPB provides unrestricted funding focused on visual system research in health and disease.  Dr. Kolodkin is one of 40 researchers who have received the award since it was established in 2014. Research in Dr. Kolodkin’s laboratory funded by this RBP award will be focused on investigating novel roles of mechcanotransduction channels in visual system development and in inherited diseases that compromise eye movement in response to image motion.

More information about RPB grants program can be found here:  www.rpbusa.org

Information about the RPB Stein Innovation Award can be found here: https://www.rpbusa.org/rpb/grants-and-research/grants/grants-for-individuals/stein-innovation-awards/

Congrats to Gian Molina-Castro, a Neuroscience PhD student in Dr. Dwight Bergles lab, for winning a 2021 Career Impact Award!  

Tune into the Career Impact Awards Ceremony on December 2, 2021 @ 1:00 p.m. (ET).  Register to attend on Zoom here!

Congratulations to our Neuroscience Grad students who passed their Graduate Oral Exams! 

Chris Seong Yeol An,
Riley Bannon,
Matilde Castro,
Daniel Daudelin,
Aleksander Geske,
Eric Hsu,
Hsin-Yi Hung,
Pelin Ozel,
Alina Spiegel,
Charles Walters,
Tiger Yu Kang Xu

The White Coat Ceremony on October 29th can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nG_3VNs4z0

Neuroscience students are coated at 56:15.