How the office org chart in your brain helps to organize your actions
Salk researchers have resolved a long-standing scientific debate
about how behavior is organized in the brain. Associate Professor
Xin Jin and first author Claire Geddes, a UC San Diego graduate
student, discovered that learned behavior is organized in a hierarchy
with multiple levels of control, offering possible new therapeutic
targets for disorders that involve an inability to control one’s actions.
The study used mice trained to carry out a series of lever presses
in a specific order, left-left-right-right, to make the discovery.
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Gerald Shadel explores stressed-out mitochondriaInside Salk sat down with Shadel to find out how he became interested in mitochondria, what he is driven by scientifically and what he has learned about aging along the way.
The science of agingWhat we know about longevity so far: Minimizing smoking, obesity and overeating while maximizing exercise and social interactions seem to correspond to longer and healthier lives, but not always. While many factors have been touted as panaceas for extending life–everything from adhering to a Mediterranean diet to regularly imbibing red wine–a “fountain of youth” has remained stubbornly elusive.
Lillian Eichner: Reading the clues to fight cancerEichner began studying cancer while pursuing her PhD at McGill University in Montreal. She was drawn to the Salk Institute for her postdoctoral studies because Reuben Shaw, director of the Salk Cancer Center and a professor in Salk’s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, has taken a new approach to cancer by studying the metabolic pathways of deadly tumors.