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Professor Charan Ranganath, UC Davis Center for Neuroscience, talks about the latest advances in understanding memory, in particular memory and the healthy aging brain, and PTSD. 

Ranganath was interviewed by Davis Community Television host Lin Weaver on June 13, 2019. 

Ask most people about the neurochemical origins of depression and you’ll likely hear how low serotonin levels are the cause. But today’s scientists know depression’s roots are more tangled and complex. One area of interest to them is the brain’s prefrontal cortex, a region responsible for motivational and goal-directed behavior. For those with depression, this region’s neurons are unhealthy, their connections, called synapses, withering like rotten roots.

An advocate for computational and quantitative biology, CNS faculty member Mark Goldman has been appointed to the Joel Keizer Endowed Chair in Theoretical and Computational Biology. The position honors the late Professor Joel Keizer, a pioneering UC Davis faculty member and theoretical biologist who spent 28 years on campus. He died on May 16, 1999 from lung cancer at the age of 56.

Research about how to measure healthy brain aging is still evolving – and UC Davis is leading the charge, focusing on brain health throughout an individual’s lifespan. 

Microdosing - taking tiny amounts of psychedelic drugs to boost mood and mental acuity - was found to provide relief for symptoms of depression and anxiety in a study with rats by CNS Affliate David Olson, assistant professor in the UC Davis departments of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine.

Wilsaan Joiner, PhD, recently joined the UC Davis neuroscience community as an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and School of Medicine’s Department of Neurology. Joiner is particularly interested in how sensory inputs guide our motor actions and vice versa; for example, how ballet dancers possess a precise sense of where their bodies are in space and how they make very fine body movements.

Cameron Carter, MD, professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and former director of the Center for Neuroscience, is one of 19 researchers from the University of California, Davis, named in the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2018 list released by Clarivate Analytics. The list identifies exceptional scientists and social scientists who have demonstrated significant influence by publishing multiple papers that rank in the top 1 percent by citations in a particular field and year, over a 10-year period.

This year’s UC Davis Young Alumnus Award winner Richard Addante Ph.D. ’11 – only seven years out from graduating with a PhD in Neurosciecne – is already the only psychologist to participate in a NASA simulation mission to Mars. During the mission, his team helped develop NASA’s understanding of challenges that may arise for humans confined together in a long mission.  

Recently, the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences named Professor W. Martin Usrey, a neurobiologist interested in the physiology of vision, to the Barbara A. Horwitz and John M. Horowitz Endowed Chair in Physiology. Usrey, who is the chair of the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and a faculty member of the Center for Neuroscience,  will hold the appointment for five years. The endowment will support his research, teaching and service activities.     

Researchers have revealed a new brainwave device that supposedly boosts our ability to remember significantly more information.

A device that gives us a significantly enhanced memory has long been a trope of science fiction, and perhaps the dreams of many a student. Now, researchers at University of California, Davis, have revealed a somewhat similar device that enhances brainwaves crucial to our ability to recall information.

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Christine Blasey Ford drew heavily on her psychology background while giving an emotional testimony about her alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, discussing everything from brain chemistry to risk factors for anxiety.

Vastly more advanced than any supercomputer, the complexity and versatility of the human brain is awe-inspiring. Of all its abilities, learning from new experiences might be the most powerful and astounding feature. But how does learning occur? And how do we remember what we learn? 

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of neurodevelopmental conditions defined by social and communication deficits accompanied by repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. The core symptoms of ASDs are rarely isolated and most often coexist with other conditions, such as intellectual disability and epilepsy. ASDs have a strong genetic basis as demonstrated by recurrence risk in families and twin studies. In recent years, genetic studies have identified several chromatin remodeling genes with causal roles in neurodevelopmental disorders

Of all the social gaffes, none is perhaps more common than meeting a new person, exchanging names and promptly forgetting theirs — forcing you to either swallow your pride and ask again, or languish in uncertainty forever.

Why do we keep making this mistake? There are a few potential explanations, says Charan Ranganath, the director of the Memory and Plasticity Program at the University of California, Davis.

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