The Synaptic Bases of Mental Diseases
26 August 2017
How can we understand the insanely complex mess of information that’s constantly buzzing inside our brain? With 100 billion neurons in the average human brain, and 100 trillion connections between them, there isn’t an easy answer. Neuroscientists today use MRIs Read more…
27 July 2017
Schizophrenia patients often experience an altered sense of self, for example, as if someone else is controlling their actions. This impairment is described as a deficit in the “sense of agency”, and while it has been well established and linked Read more…
19 July 2017
EPFL scientists have discovered how low-dose anxiolytics increase the social competitiveness of high-anxious individuals by boosting the energy output of mitochondria in an area of the mammalian brain that controls motivation and reward. Psychologists speak of anxiety in two forms: Read more…
14 July 2017
EPFL scientists have identified rank in social hierarchies as a major determining factor for vulnerability to chronic stress. They also show that energy metabolism in the brain is a predictive biomarker for social status as well as stress vulnerability and Read more…
26 June 2017
A team of researchers from the Swiss Blue Brain Project — a group focusing on supercomputer-powered reconstruction of the human brain — have used a classic branch of maths in a completely new way to better understand the structure of our brains. Read more…
24 September 2015
Professor Pierre Magistretti, from EPFL’s Brain Mind Institute, has been awarded the prestigious IPSEN Neuronal Plasticity prize for 2016. The 2016 Neuronal Plasticity prize is awarded jointly to Professor Pierre Magistretti, and another two world-renowned scientists, Professor David Altwell from Read more…
26 June 2015
A team of neuroscientists from EPFL, MIT and Stanford uncovered a new stress-related mechanism involved in memory deterioration. In ever faster moving societies, an increasing number of people is becoming affected by the short- and long-term consequences of chronic stress. Read more…
26 March 2015
Glial cells Scientists at EPFL, KAUST and UCL have created the first computer model of the metabolic coupling between neuron and glia, an essential feature of brain function. Confirming previous experimental data, the model is now being integrated into the Read more…
19 February 2015
How does stress affect our self-confidence when we compete? An EPFL study shows how stress could actually be both a consequence and a cause of social and economic inequality, affecting our ability to compete and make financial decisions. Stress is Read more…
