All Posts: brain
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MCGSO Members Virtually Volunteer for BrainSTEM Week
(April 23, 2021) — Members of the Medical Center Graduate Student Organization (MCGSO) shared their passion for science with students from Hardy Middle School in Washington, D.C., during BrainSTEM Week via Zoom April 5-9. Comprising demonstrations, career talks and research discussions, BrainSTEM Week combined two annual MCGSO events: Brain Awareness Week and STEM Night. As […]
Category: GUMC Stories
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Ostroumov Receives Whitehall Grant for Research on Neuropsychiatric Disorders
(March 12, 2021) — Since joining Georgetown’s Department of Pharmacology & Physiology in January 2020, assistant professor Alexey Ostroumov, PhD, has focused on establishing his lab — an especially unique challenge in the midst of a pandemic. “I was lucky to have a great team during the last year that helped me to build the […]
Category: GUMC Stories
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Immune-Compromised People with HIV, APOE4 Gene May Have a Compounded Risk for Alzheimer’s
WASHINGTON (February 22, 2021) — People living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who have a history of severe immunosuppression and at least one copy of the Alzheimer’s disease-related gene variant APOE4 might see a compounded adverse effect on the circuitry that impacts memory. This could eventually lead to an increased risk for dementia after […]
Category: News Release
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Art Installation Illustrates Dyslexic Brains at Work
(January 14, 2021) — When a person practices a skill, the neural representations in the relevant parts of the brain change, allowing the person to perform the skill better. Research by Guinevere Eden, PhD, a Georgetown University professor of pediatrics and the director of the Center for the Study of Learning, found that the same […]
Category: GUMC Stories
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Tweaking AI Software to Function Like a Human Brain Improves Computer’s Learning Ability
WASHINGTON (January 12, 2021) — Computer-based artificial intelligence can function more like human intelligence when programmed to use a much faster technique for learning new objects, say two neuroscientists who designed such a model to mirror human visual learning. In the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, Maximilian Riesenhuber, PhD, professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University […]
Category: News Release
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Study of Reaching and Grasping with Hand or Foot Reveals Novel Brain Insights
WASHINGTON (October 26, 2020) — People born without upper limbs who use their feet to reach for an item engage the same area in the brain that people with hands use to reach for something, report Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists. The finding, published October 26, 2020, in PNAS, advances the basic science of brain […]
Category: News Release
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Study Suggests Unconscious Learning Underlies Belief in God
WASHINGTON (September 9, 2020) — Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at Georgetown University. Their research, reported in the journal Nature Communications, is the first to […]
Category: News Release
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Children Use Both Brain Hemispheres to Understand Language, Unlike Adults
WASHINGTON (September 7, 2020) — Infants and young children have brains with a superpower, of sorts, say Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists. Whereas adults process most discrete neural tasks in specific areas in one or the other of their brain’s two hemispheres, youngsters use both the right and left hemispheres to do the same task. […]
Category: News Release
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Gulf War Illness and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Distinct Illnesses, Georgetown Study Suggests
WASHINGTON (August 10, 2020) — A brain imaging study of veterans with Gulf War illness (GWI) and patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) (sometimes called myalgic encephalomyelitis), has shown that the two illnesses produce distinctly different, abnormal patterns of brain activity after moderate exercise. The result of the Georgetown University Medical Center study suggests that […]
Category: News Release
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Early-life Education Improves Memory in Old Age — Especially for Women
WASHINGTON (June 5, 2020) — Education appears to protect older adults, especially women, against memory loss, according to a study by investigators at Georgetown University Medical Center, published in the journal Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition. The results suggest that children — especially girls — who attend school for longer will have better memory abilities in […]
Category: News Release