Health News

A new study, Historical redlining and cardiovascular health: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, led by Berkeley Public Health’s Mahasin S. Mujahid, examined historical redlining, a discriminatory government-sanctioned policy and an indicator of structural racism, in relation to cardiovascular health.

A common stereotype is that growing up poor can stunt brain development due to adverse environmental conditions. But on a positive note, new UC Berkeley research suggests that children’s brains can adapt in different ways to socioeconomic challenges and excel.

Berkeley neuroscientist Yang Dan will help conduct an ambitious $9 million project exploring how the circuitry in the brain progressively goes awry in patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Whether chatting with friends at a dinner party or managing a high-stakes meeting at work, communicating with others in a group requires a complex set of mental tasks. Our brains must track who is speaking and what is being said, as well as what our relationship to that person may be — because, after all, we probably give the opinion of our best friend more weight than that of a complete stranger. A study published today in the journal Science provides the first glimpse into how the brains of social mammals process these types of complex group interactions.

When you clicked to read this story, a band of cells across the top of your brain sent signals down your spine and out to your hand to tell the muscles in your index finger to press down with just the right amount of pressure to activate your mouse or track pad. A slew of new studies now shows that the area of the brain responsible for initiating this action — the primary motor cortex, which controls movement — has as many as 116 different types of cells that work together to make this happen.

David Julius, one of today’s winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was a standout even as a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the 1970s and ’80s, according to one of his mentors, 2013 Nobel laureate Randy Schekman.

Researchers at UC Berkeley successfully revived human heart tissue after it had been preserved in a subfreezing, supercooled state for 1 to 3 days.

Long before sports superstars Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles braved the spotlight to defend their mental health, Graig Chow, a certified mental performance consultant at UC Berkeley, studied the culture that pushes elite athletes like NBA players Chamique Holdsclaw, Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan to their breaking points.

The experience of a fruit fly dying from cancer may seem worlds away from that of a human with a life-threatening tumor, yet University of California, Berkeley, researchers are finding commonalities between the two that could lead to ways to prolong the lives of cancer patients.

A new analysis by researchers at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health shows that Black youth in California experience disproportionate injuries at the hands of law enforcement, with Black boys and Black girls aged 10-14 injured at 5.3 and 6.7 times the rate for White boys and White girls, respectively, in the same age group.

Jessica Cabrera knows the recipe for homemade window cleaner by heart — and is more than happy to share it. “All you have to do is mix vinegar, water and dish soap, and there you have it,” Cabrera said. Cabrera, who grew up in California’s Salinas Valley, just started her first year as an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. And while it may seem unusual for a new college student to have a passion for window cleaner, Cabrera has good reason for knowing the ins and outs of DIY cleaning products.

Graduate student Kristen LeGault and assistant professor Kimberley Seed, both in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, specialize in the evolution of human pathogens and the viruses that infect bacteria, known as phages. Their recent study led to a key discovery about antibiotic and antiviral defense in cholera, as well as phage adaptation.