SAN DIEGO & BELFAST, Northern Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Neurovalens, a global HealthTech company focused on developing innovative neuroscience-powered products to improve lives, today introduces Modius SLEEP. The device follows the success of the Companys first headset, Modius SLIM, which raised $2.5M on Indiegogo in 2017, gaining worldwide popularity with orders from 80+ countries.

Modius SLEEP continues the Companys mission to improve global health and wellness by providing drug-free, neurological solutions for common health problems. Modius SLEEP is available for $249 for the duration of the campaign on Indiegogo and will retail for $499. Campaign Link: https://igg.me/at/modiussleep.

Thousands of Modius SLIM device users around the world found improved sleep was a welcomed bonus reaction and our motivation for making changes to our technology to create Modius SLEEP, said Jason McKeown, CEO of Neurovalens. This new headset taps into the power of the brains hypothalamus, which acts as a mini-computer and influences many areas of the brain, including weight loss and sleep. Our aim is to help people avoid sedatives and sleeping pills as they mask the underlying problem and produce unpleasant side effects. We use neuroscience to improve lives through safe, innovative, non-invasive products and have complete confidence our SLEEP device is just as life-changing as our SLIM device has been.

In a 30-day study, 95% of Modius SLEEP users improved their overall sleep score, with 85% claiming they were satisfied with their improved sleep patterns. Additionally, 71.3% with sleep issues reported positive changes when using Modius SLEEP.

How it Works:

Unlike other sleep headsets that are limited to passively reading brain-wave activity, Modius SLEEP actively stimulates the key sleep neurons in the brain, reducing time it takes to fall asleep and keeping you asleep longer. The Modius SLEEP headset is worn for 30 minutes before bed with no need to wear in bed. It works by sending a safe electrical pulse into the vestibular nerve that influences the areas of the hypothalamus and brain stem that controls the users circadian rhythm and sleep patterns.

About Neurovalens:

Neurovalens is a global healthtech company and leader in the development of non-invasive neurostimulation products which aims to improve global health and wellness using drug-free neurological solutions. Its premier product, Modius SLIM has been sold in 80+ countries and helps people meet their weight loss goals. The Modius SLEEP headset was designed to help people fix their sleep problems for good. Founded by Dr. Jason McKeown in 2015, the Company is currently run from dual-headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland and at the University of California San Diegos Centre for Brain & Cognition. For more information visit: https://us.modiushealth.com/pages/modius-sleep

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Neurovalens Unveils Modius SLEEP, a Genius Next-Gen Device Powered by Neuroscience to Optimize Sleep Health and Address the Global Sleep Crisis,...

Lakeland University students Tegan Schneider and Mitchel Larsen presented their research at the 50th annual Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting in Chicago in October.(Photo: Jered McGivern)

SHEBOYGAN - The woman's skin sample had already been "tricked" to think it was an embryo. The job for two Lakeland University biochemistry students was to make it behave like brain tissue.

Tegan Schneider, of Plymouth, and Mitchel Larsen, of Sheboygan, teamed up for this unusual task during Lakeland's summer research program, hoping to better understand how the brain regulates neurotransmitters.

Now juniors, they continued their work this semester and recently presented their research at the 50th annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.

The sample they worked with came from the Medical College of Wisconsin and had already been directed, using chemicals, to behave like fetal tissue.

To get the sample to think it was brain tissue, Schneider and Larsen added growth factors that those cells would normally see during developmentin the brain.

The purpose of making brain cells in a dish, from skin cells: Donated brain tissue is hard to come by, said Jered McGivern, an assistant professor of biochemistry at Lakeland, who helped them with their research.

"There's a lot of work being done in the medical field to use (this method) for developing treatments and cures," McGivern said.

McGivern said Schneider and Larsen did a great job of trying different techniques to study neurotransmitters with the instrumentation they had, and they did a lot of work outside of the summer program because they were so interested.

One of the biggest challenges was to keep their cells from getting contaminated, sincethey don't have an immune system.

Theresearch is good experience for them to have as they move into bigger labs, McGivern said.

Suzette Rosas didthe foundational work and is now a graduate student at the Medical College of Wisconsin, he added.

McGivern joined Schneider and Larsen at the meeting in Chicago, which was attended by over 27,000 people, and where the students got to learn about work being done in the field.

Schneider and Larsenwere able to attend the meeting because of a gift from 1969 Lakeland graduate Cliff Feldmann.

Contact Diana Dombrowski at ddombrowski@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @domdomdiana

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After 'tricking' skin cells to behave like brain tissue, Lakeland students present at neuroscience megaconference - Sheboygan Press

XconomySan Francisco

These are heady times for neuroscience research. Startups developing new approaches to brain disorders are raising money to advance their discoveries toward clinical trials. One failed neuro drug is getting another shot.

On Nov. 19 in San Francisco, well hold the latest in our Xchange event series. Whats Next in Neuroscience Therapies will take a look at new technologies that are changing how we understand brain diseases and spinal injuries, as well as novel approaches that companies are taking to treat these conditions. One such company, Alector (NASDAQ: ALEC), aims to treat neurodegeneration as an immune system problem. The South San Francisco biotech is developing antibody therapies that bolster immune cells that help the brain clear away proteins and debris associated with neurodegenerative disorders.

Earlier this year, Alector completed a $176 million IPO. The company is now deploying that cash in clinical trials: a drug candidate for frontotemporal dementia and two experimental therapies for Alzheimers disease. Stephanie Yonker, the companys vice president of legal, will talk about her companys approach to neurodegeneration at the upcoming event.

BlackThorn Therapeutics is deploying technologies such as artificial intelligence and brain imaging to help it discover new drugs and enroll the clinical trials to test them. The San Francisco companys focus is neurobehavioral disease. BlackThorn quietly emerged four years ago based on research from the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. At our forum, Jane Tiller, BlackThorns chief medical officer, and Kristina Burow of ARCH Venture Partners will tell BlackThorns story from its Scripps origins to the present day as a clinical-stage company backed by $130 million in financing. BlackThorn has completed Phase 1 tests of it lead drug in depressionand is preparing for Phase 2; an experimental autism spectrum disorder drug is being readied to start tests in humans next year.

Spinal cord injury continues to pose obstacles to treatment. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is pursuing new therapies through grants awarded to universities and companies. Much of this research aims to develop ways to use stem cells to heal the injury. Abla Creasey, CIRMs vice president of therapeutics and strategic infrastructure, will discuss these efforts. Meanwhile, the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation is raising a venture philanthropy fund to support new research. Ethan Perlstein, the Reeve Foundations chief scientific officer, will talk about the foundations efforts to find new treatments and potential cures for spinal cord injury.

If youd like to hear more about these new efforts to treat brain disorders and spinal cord injury, join us at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco for Whats Next in Neuroscience Therapies. You can see the agenda for the event here. Additional information, including registration details, are here. We hope to see you on Nov. 19.

Photo by Depositphotos

Frank Vinluan is an Xconomy editor based in Research Triangle Park. You can reach him at fvinluan [[at]] xconomy.com.

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Neuroscience Is Taking the Spotlight at Xconomy's Bay Area Xchange - Xconomy

Sienna Axe, A&E ReporterNovember 14, 2019

What can German literature tell us about the human brain? On Wednesday, Nov. 6, Dr. Sonja Boos, an associate professor in the department of German and Scandinavian at the University of Oregon, showed Whitmans German department along with a few unaffiliated-yet-interested attendees the answer.

Dr. Boos lecture, entitled Learning to See: Neuroanatomy and Cytoarchitectonics in Rilkes Paris, was centered around Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilkes 1910 novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

The novel, argued by some to be more of a long prose poem, is focused less on plot and more on the psyche and thought processes of its first-person narrator, the titular Malte. Dr. Boos used this as an example of the connections between literature and neuroscience, something she has been researching extensively for her current book project, Poetics of the Brain: The Emergence of Neuroscience and the German Novel, which Amazon lists as scheduled to arrive in 2021.

Dr. Boos opened the talk by reading a passage a description of a dilapidated building from the novels original German text and explaining that it showed the effect of industrialization on modern city dwellers, one she called a pervasive feeling of horror. What followed was a deep dive into German literature, the human brain and changes in psychiatric and neuroscientific thought over time.

Emily Jones, assistant professor of German Studies & Environmental Humanities at Whitman, said that Dr. Boos analysis of the neuroscience involved in her lecture was especially impressive.

I think Dr. Booss work is excellent, Jones said. Her depth of research into the history of neuroscience is impressive since its pretty far outside her normal specialty as a literary scholar, and her reading of Rilkes novel especially the scene she close-read with the houses removed facade totally changed how I think about [it].

According to Jones, the German department wanted to bring Dr. Boos to Whitman for her interdisciplinary research.

We especially wanted to invite Dr. Boos because we are interested in how she is bringing together the disciplines of literary criticism and the neuroscience, Jones said. [Whitman German Studies professor] Eva Hoffmann knew Dr. Boos and suggested her as an exciting interdisciplinary scholar.

Sophomore Adam Rosenberg attended the lecture to fulfill a requirement for his German 205 class and came away intellectually inspired.

I just thought that it was really well researched, and clearly a ton of work and effort was put into it, Rosenberg said. The depth of knowledge that she represented was just very impressive, and I would like to do something like that in my academic career.

Sophomore Julien Comardelle, who attended the lecture to fulfill a requirement for his German 105 class, appreciated Dr. Boos discussion of how literature described the neuropsychological schools of thought of the time.

One of the biggest takeaways was her discussion of how Rilke and others talked about the development of the medical gaze, Comardelle said, referring to the shift Boos described from understanding the brain as something more esoteric and spiritual to understanding it as a more scientific organ.

Comardelle was also impressed by Boos argument that literatures understanding of the human brain was sometimes ahead of the scientists of the time.

She talked about brain slides, and how [scientists] were able to reconstruct a human brain from that, whereas in Rilke, who came somewhat before that, their discussion of how the mind is structured is ahead of the scientific understanding, he said.

Jones hopes that the talk helped deepen attendees understanding and appreciation for how different studies can feed into each other.

I hope that attendees at the talk were convinced that studying literatures relationship with science is productive, Jones said. So often we treat these fields as at best tangentially related, but they are really often interacting with one another.

She also hopes that students will be inspired to master a new language, saying that Dr. Boos understanding of the original German contributed to her ability to construct some of her arguments.

Comardelle had a takeaway very similar to what Jones was hoping for.

You can really see how the study of a language can apply to things you wouldnt expect, Comardelle said. Like, you wouldnt expect German literature to talk about brain science but yet it does. And even if you have a basic understanding of the German language, you can get an appreciation for the complexity of that kind of translation it was really interesting how she was able to deal with that kind of problem.

Dr. Boos research not only introduces some interesting points about German literature and neuroscience, but it also acts as a compelling argument for interdisciplinary studies, something very near and dear to many students at this liberal arts school we call home.

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Learning to See explores neuroscience and literature - Whitman Pioneer

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Luis Dias

As aspecies, why are we willing to kill, exploit, or willfully disregard peopleweve never met? This question leapt out of my laptop screen just as I waswinding down and calling it a night.

It struck a chord. It is a question, perhaps differentlyphrased, that troubles me a lot, and Im sure Im not alone: How and why are wecapable of treating others cruelly, of dehumanising a person or a group ofpeople?

The article, in The Economist, was titled Does yourbrain care about other people? It depends, co-written by David Eagleman,neuroscientist at Stanford University and author of several books on cognitionand society; and Don Vaughn, neuroscientist at the University of California LosAngeles.

It begins with the story of Lord George Gordon(1751-1793), British nobleman and politician, who fought against the injusticemeted out to sailors in the Royal Navy at the time, and against the evils ofslavery on the one hand; but was also responsible for instigating several daysof anti-Catholic riots (known even today infamously as the Gordon riots) in1780. Gordon marched a 50,000-strong mob to the Houses of Parliament that wenton over a whole week to destroy Roman Catholic churches and pillage Catholichomes, killing or wounding hundreds of people in what has gone down as themost destructive domestic upheaval in the history of London.

This, then is the conundrum: how can someone have empathyfor one group or groups of people, but simultaneously harbour antipathy towardsanother?

The writers put it down to a fundamental fact of humannature: our tendency to form ingroups and outgroupsthat is, groups that wefeel attached to and those that we dont. Yes, we have empathy, but it isselective. Eagleman and Vaughn cite examples such as a hometown, a school or areligion bonding people within an ingroup. In India, the big bond would alsohave to be caste.

The Second World War had brought into sharp focus howdangerous such divisions into ingroups and outgroups could be, with thedehumanisation of Jews by the Nazis, and American wartime propaganda portrayingthe Japanese as subhuman, while Japanese propaganda depicted Americans asmonsters.

The authors describe a 1954 psychological study dividinga study sample of pre-teen boys into arbitrary groups, and the antagonism andpartisanship sometimes erupting into violence that resulted from this randomdivision.

This is not an isolated study. It has been replicated atdifferent times in different places in different age-groups. I remember readingabout a similar study from about a decade later. The day after Martin LutherKing Jr was assassinated in April 1968, class-teacher Jane Elliott in a smallall-white town of Riceville Iowa decided to teach her third-graders a lesson inthe meaning of discrimination when she realised that they couldnt understandwhy someone should even want to murder an icon that they had recently madeHero of the Month.

She divided her class by eye colour: those with blue andthose with brown eyes. On the first day, one group was told they were smarter,nicer, neater, and better than the other group. The better group were givenprivileges such a longer recess, and being first in cafeteria lunch line. Theother group had to wear a collar around their neck and their behaviour andperformance were criticised and ridiculed by Elliott.

The next day, the tables were turned, and the other groupbecame the dominant group. In each case, the superior group becamemean-spirit and took pleasure in the discrimination against the other group.

Realising that she had created a microcosm of society ina third-grade classroom, Elliott repeated the exercise for two consecutiveyears after that. Fourteen years later, Frontlines A Class Divideddocumented a reunion of the last, 1970 third-grade class, who still rememberedand cherished the lessons from that experiment.

Eagleman and Vaughn relate the results of a ratherbizarre experiment carried out in 2010. Scientists at the University of Zurichrecruited sports fans for a brain imaging study. The fans were first allowed tomeet and exchange trivia. They then underwent a brain scan during which theywatched other fans receiving painful electric shocks to their hands. Watchingthe pain inflicted on others activated parts of the brain as if they wereexperiencing it themselves. This is the neural basis of empathy, the writersexplain.

But there was a darker side to the interpretation of thedata. Participants experienced higher brain activity when watching the painexperienced by those who liked the same sports team they did, and less activitywhen watching pain inflicted to fans of a rival team!

To remove the bias from the sports fans recognising eachother, Eagleman and Vaughn designed another study: Participants lay in an MRIscanner and looked at six hands on a video screen. The computer selected onehand at random, and then a hypodermic needle entered the picture and stabbedinto the flesh of that hand. In a control condition, a long cotton swab touchedthe persons handvisually similar to the needle, but this time with no pain.By contrasting the brains reaction to the needle and the cotton swab, theresearchers felt they could measure the brain networks that became active whenwitnessing anothers pain.

Then came the twist: Each hand became marked with asimple label: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Scientologist or atheist. Thequestion they wished to answer was: would a participant experience more pain ifh/she belonged to the label hand being stabbed? Would a Christian feel morepain on watching pain inflicted to a Christian hand?

That was indeed their conclusion. Watching an ingrouphand get stabbed evoked more empathic brain activity; an outgroup handtriggered less, despite all the protestations of neutrality on the part ofsome participants.

The authors ask us to reflect: Take a moment to thinkabout your own level of empathy toward others. Imagine that you see a60-year-old man twist his ankle and fall to the ground. Do you feel an empathicsting? Now imagine hes at a rally for a politician that you loathe. Is yourempathy any different? And if so, does that challenge your view of yourself asan empathic person? If you had unequal responses in the two situations, yourenot alone: people generally assess their own empathy by thinking about those intheir ingroup.

I thought the same thing when pictures of the horrific blazeof the Tezgam passenger train travelling between Karachi and Rawalpindi,killing at least 75, appeared on social media. The ha-ha emoticon reactionfrom tens of thousands of people (while many more reacted with concern, to besure) was mind-numbing. How could anyone trivialise a tragedy like this,wherever it may have occurred, and regardless of who the unfortunate victimswere?

Eagleman and Vaughn suggest that rather than feelingdoomed to succumb to our ingrained biases, we can fight them through severalstrategies such as understanding our own biases; building a better model ofothers; and learning to resist the tactics of dehumanisation.

Excerpt from:
The neuroscience of empathy - The Navhind Times

Eckerds biology students are researching how the brain is impacted by experience and how pesticides are affecting organisms through an interesting model: the honeybee.

Colonies of over 150,000 total bees live within Eckerds palm hammock habitat, making babies and honey for students to study.

Seniors Jasmine Oakley and Sasha Grossman started this project with Assistant Professor of Biology Scott Dobrin last spring. After caring for the colonies all summer, they look forward to collecting data this semester about the bees brain structures in different life stages and with various exposures to pesticides.

Overall, its trying to understand how the brains of the bees change as they have more experience and with age, Oakley said.

The research lab is still working out methodology and funding, with most of their efforts focused on caring for the bees, determining how they can keep them alive in the lab and the certain concentrations of pesticides they will use. They care for the bees both in the lab and out in the colonies.

Our research is really important, because we are basically trying to prove that even a little bit of pesticides can lead to bad diseases. So its important for our health, Oakley said.

In the lab, the bees are kept in small plexiglass containers, with 10 to 30 bees in each. They are fed with little tubes of sugar, or, most recently, a special nectar mixture, that is changed everyday. Students also clean the bee cages in the event that some have died.

They dont like seeing their dead friends, Grossman said.

Out in the colonies, the care is more relaxed.

We just let them do their own thing, Oakley said. And then every once in a while, well go and look and make sure that theyre OK

Dobrin needed to become an expert beekeeper quickly for his research. As long as things look normal in his eyes, the bees are OK.

Your job is less keeping the bees, but creating an environment that theyre happy in, Dobrin said.

He makes sure that there is some sign of the queen, the most important bee of the hive that provides all of the offspring. They also scrape the comb off of the boxes, called supers, to keep things tidy so that the bees have enough space.

Its kind of like if you have a car sitting around for a long period of time, you just sort of have to run it every so often, Dobrin said.

Dobrin has found quite a niche of beekeepers in our surrounding community.

Pinellas County has this amazing beekeeper association, Dobrin said. Ive gone to a bunch of different ones just in the places that Ive lived. And Ive never seen so many people show up to this before.

Oakley and Grossman do not find their research to be particularly dangerous, with only two cases of students stung by the bees. Bees typically only sting if their colonies are threatened or if humans disturb them through noise, waving around their hands or squishing them.

Theyre really sweet bees, Oakley said. Theyre just so gentle and sweet, and really chill.

In terms of pesticide exposure, the lab is focusing on one of the more common pesticides, neonicotinoids, and how that impacts the bees brains. They plan to study both short and long-term exposure, as well as the compounding impacts that may come from a mixture of pesticides. Dobrin equates it to combining different drugs and how their impacts compound in serious ways.

According to Dobrin, pesticides have impacts on more than just insects. Researchers are still not sure how these chemicals will affect human health in the long-term.

Besides human health, according to Oakley, bees provide other services to humans and nature. Bees pollinate a significant portion of our food, and they have been dying off in recent years.

Bees are probably one of the most important insects and animals that we have. We would not be alive without them, Grossman said.

Oakley, Grossman and Dobrin encourage students to come visit their lab and ask them questions if they are curious about bee research.

Students should not disturb the colonies in the palm hammock to avoid interfering with the research on them or disturb the natural pollinators.

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Bees, brains and behavior: Honeybees give insight into neuroscience - The Current

Guillaume Riesen is a fifth-year graduate student in the Neurosciences PhD Program, but his pursuits extend far beyond the lab. Just scroll through his blog or his YouTube channel and you can see that he juggles a number of passions. Including juggling.

I caught up with him recently to learn more.

How did you getinterested in science?

I've always been curious about the world and science was the tool that helped me pursue that interest. My dad is a field service engineer and fixes hospital machines when they break. When I was a kid, he would bring back all these little tools, containers and vials, and I would put stuff in them and see how they decayed over time.

What are you working on right now?

My current project is about visual perception and what happens when the two eyes have different inputs. Normally, each eye sees a slightly different image and your brain takes those two images and produces one 3D perception of the world. If the two images are divergent enough, they'll compete and only one eye will produce a visual sensation at a time; this is called binocular rivalry.

My research asks what happens if you have something that's kind of similar, but just different enough that sometimes there's competition. This work just recently got published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I love to make things -- I'm an obsessive creator and do a lot of art and random projects. Most recently, I've been doing a lot of ceramics at the Stanford ceramics studio, which has been super fun.

And I've been doing a lot of stuff at the Product Realization Lab, Stanford's hacker space. I design tessellations -- shapes that fit into themselves to fill space, like the squares on a checkerboard. I also made a little model of the Hoover Tower that lights up for my advisor after I published my first journal article.

How did you start juggling?

I was inspired by a viral video by juggler Chris Bliss that I found really beautiful, and then taught myself using balled-up socks. Juggling is very addictive; there's always something you can't quite do, so I haven't really stopped since. Most broadly, juggling is kind of a mindset. It's a playful exploration of what's possible when manipulating objects within gravity. This can be applied in almost any situation and I've had a lot of fun seeing how different objects behave through this lens.

Could you describe your YouTube channel?

I started my channel when I was in high school because there weren't many resources for learning to juggle. It took me a long time to teach myself from written descriptions, so I decided to make tutorials based on that.

And then I started doing science videos.

In college, one of my professors had a really cool demo where you look through a hole in an index card and you shake it around. You see the blood vessels in the back of your eye, which are actually in front of your photosensitive cells. They're constantly casting a shadow, but you don't see it because it's always there and you tune it out. But if you get a point light source and shake it around, the shadows move, and you see a network of veins, which is a wild moment.

I made my first science video explaining that demo and that's by far been my most popular video.

I like the idea of getting people to have these experiences where they see something firsthand and then that drives them to ask, "Why that would happen?"

My most recent one was about using ketamine to treat depression and actually won second place in the Brain Awareness Video Contest from the Society for Neuroscience this year.

I'm hoping in my future career to do something in the education space and bring a philosophy of hands-on, active learning.

Photo by Daphne Sashin

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In the Spotlight: Juggling vision, videos - and balls - Scope

The University Professors will lead a public symposium on Nov. 17Photo/Mike Lovett

University professors Eve Marder '69, Left, and Irving R. Epstein

University Professors Eve Marder '69 and Irv Epstein will help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Volen National Center for Complex Systems in a public symposium November 17.

Marder, the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience, and Epstein, the Henry F. Fischbach Professor of Chemistry, were named University Professors last spring in recognition of their pioneering interdisciplinary achievements. At the symposium, they will each deliver a lecture drawing on their collaborative research on oscillators. In the case of Epstein, these are oscillating chemical reactions. In Marders case, it is rhythmically active neurons and/or circuits.

But some 35 years ago, before they were leaders in their fields, Epstein and Marder saw the benefit of sharing ideas. A mutual colleague noticed that the chemical reactions recorded on the chart recorder Epstein was using looked intriguingly similar to the neuronal signals Marder was recording in her research.

Its relatively unusual behavior for chemistry, but its sort of the essence of what goes on in neuronal systems, said Epstein, who soon learned some rudiments of neuroscience from Marder and began mathematically modeling groups of neurons. For her part, Marder got an appreciation for what interacting with theorists could bring, to help her answer the kind of questions she wanted to answer, said Epstein.

These days, Marders research on small neural circuits found in lobsters and crabs is credited with revolutionizing understanding of the fundamental nature of neuronal circuit operation, including how neuromodulators control behavioral outputs and how the stability of circuits is maintained over time. She has won many top prizes in neuroscience, including the Gruber Award in Neuroscience, the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience, and the National Academy of Sciences Neuroscience Prize. In March, she will receive the Carnegie Prize in Mind and Brain Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Epstein, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor, pioneered the field of chemical oscillators. When we got into the field of oscillating reactions, there were just three that were known, and they were all discovered accidentally, said Epstein. We decided that if we really understood these systems, we should be able to design them.

Although it took him several years and three unsuccessful grant applications to secure funding for his ideas, Epstein and his lab ultimately won funding, and within a few months succeeded in developing their first novel chemical oscillating reaction.

Writ large, Marder and Epstein collaboratively demonstrate that the kinds of phenomena seen in neurons are also found in chemical and physical systems. What you learn from modeling chemical reactions can help you understand how neurons work, and vice versa, said Epstein.

Volen is a place where you get all kinds of collaborations, said Marder. One of Brandeis strengths is its interactivity; those early days were quite catalytic.

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Eve Marder and Irv Epstein recall the collaborations that started it all - Brandeis University