Health News

UC Berkeley integrative biology Ph.D. student Alexander Stubbs and colleague determined that a mysterious noise reported by U.S. diplomats stationed in Cuba plagued by resulting hearing loss and other medical symptoms was not from sonic attacks as feared, but was produced by the Indies short-tailed cricket (Anurogryllus celerinictus).

With the help of sponges inserted in the bloodstream to absorb excess drugs, doctors are hoping to prevent the dangerous side effects of toxic chemotherapy agents or even deliver higher doses to knock back tumors, like liver cancer, that don’t respond to more benign treatments.

A new neurostimulator developed by engineers at UC Berkeley can listen to and stimulate electric current in the brain at the same time, potentially delivering fine-tuned treatments to patients with diseases like epilepsy and Parkinson’s. The device, named the WAND, works like a “pacemaker for the brain,” monitoring the brain’s electrical activity and delivering electrical stimulation if it detects something amiss.

Extreme angst is on the rise nationally and globally, especially among teens and millennials. Among other factors, preliminary findings from UC Berkeley sleep researchers point to a chronic lack of deep restorative sleep.

What goes through a gambler’s mind after she’s placed her bet? It’s not just the anticipation of a big payoff, or doubts about the wisdom of her bet. It’s also regret about previous bets, both won and lost.

Our race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, socio-economic class and physical appearance can determine whether or not we get a break in life. But how big a role do social stereotypes really play when it comes to landing a job, loan, university spot or other opportunity?

New findings from researchers at UC Berkeley suggest that feedback, rather than hard evidence, boosts people’s sense of certainty when learning new things or trying to tell right from wrong.

Scientists have used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to lessen some autism symptoms in mice with a form of fragile X syndrome, the most common known single-gene cause of autism spectrum disorder.

Alzheimer’s disease develops when proteins in the brain form abnormal tangles, and a key player is tau protein, which normally stabilizes the cytoskeleton of neurons.

What if we could edit the sensations we feel; paste in our brain pictures that we never saw, cut out unwanted pain or insert non-existent scents into memory?

Now, Berkeley engineers have taken neural dust a step forward by building the smallest volume, most efficient wireless nerve stimulator to date.

Neuroscientists have demonstrated the astounding flexibility of the brain by training neurons that normally process input from the eyes to develop new skills, in this case, to control a computer-generated tone.