2022-01-14
- Aadeel Akhtar received his MS in Engineering and PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in December 2017. His dissertation, "Mechanisms for enabling closed-loop upper limb sensorimotor prosthetic control," was the culmination of his research on prosthetic limbs driven by an encounter he had as a child with a young girl in Pakistan who had been missing a leg....
2021-12-02 - The University of Illinois has recently shared a new "Mental Health and Self Care" resource page. The university understands that many may need to find resources for their own struggles or for someone they know.
2021-11-07 - This year's SfN Poster Night, held on October 26th, 2021, was a rousing success. The Neuroscience Program holds the SfN Night each year as a preview to the Society for Neuroscience's Annual Meeting. Attendees include faculty, researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students from all across the campus. The presenters are given an opportunity to showcase their work to a small...
2021-09-28 - Cockatiels, one of the world’s most favored pet parrots, don’t just masterfully mimic. In fact, a new study shows that they can spontaneously join in a song—much like humans do—drawing us closer to our winged ancestors than previously thought. After teaching his three male cockatiels a rendition of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse song, Yoshimasa Seki, the paper’s author, played his birds a...
2021-09-28 - Over a decade ago, behavioral ecologist Diane Colombelli-Négrel was wiring superb fairy wrens’ nests to record the birds’ sounds when she noticed something odd. Mother fairy wrens sang while incubating their eggs, even though it would have made more sense to keep quiet to avoid attracting predators. The discovery “was a bit of an accident,” says Colombelli-Négrel, of Flinders University in...
2021-09-17 - SEP 10, 2021 3:30 PM BY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Blame Jean... We always thought that we would continue teaching and working in our offices every day until we couldn’t any longer! After all, each fall in EPSY 407 Liz taught her students that an age-integrated life course in...
2021-09-15 - In Memoriam: Albert Feng, professor, former head of molecular and integrative physiology, former director neuroscience Albert Feng, a passionate and beloved scholar who studied the neural basis of sound communication, has passed away. A virtual memorial service will be held Sept. 18. His obituary may be viewed here....
2021-06-20 - New moms at risk of experiencing “baby blues” after childbirth tend to display a different pattern of brain activity compared to mothers who are not afflicted by the condition, according to new research published in PLOS One. The new findings indicate that mothers’ neural responsiveness to their...
2021-06-03 - "As a behavioral ecologist studying nestlings in bird nests, I have always known that baby birds respond to sounds in their environment, whether it be the rustling of leaves or the parents calling out to them," Mark Erno Hauber, one of the researchers who carried out...
2021-04-14 - ACES NEWS: URBANA, Ill. – Before humans can benefit from new drug therapies and nutritional additives, scientists test their safety and efficacy in animals, typically mice and rats. But, as much as they’ve done for biomedical research, rodents aren’t always the best research model for studies on...
2021-04-08 - ACES NEWS: URBANA, Ill. – When scientists need to understand the effects of new infant formula ingredients on brain development, it’s rarely possible for them to carry out initial safety studies with human subjects. After all, few parents are willing to hand over their newborns to test...
2021-03-02 - Lav Varshney and Nathan Schroeder combine their respective knowledge in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Crop Sciences along with their neuroscience knowledge to approach a growing issue in the midwest, soybean cyst nematodes. These worms are capable of destroying entire crops. Read about the connectomics and an abandoned laboratory behind this project.
2021-02-22 - You know that a sedentary lifestyle is bad for your body. A new study shows how bad it is for your mind. An article in Eat This, Not That! gives insight to the study findings and supplies recommendations to try and prevent those side effects.
2021-01-29 - JAN 29, 2021 8:30 AMBY LIZ AHLBERG TOUCHSTONE | BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES EDITOR | 217-244-1073 Childhood trauma could affect the trajectory of multiple sclerosis development and response to treatment in adulthood, a new study in mice found. Mice that had experienced stress when young were more likely to develop the...
2021-01-29 - A study by Mark Hauber, a professor of evolution, ecology, and behavior at the U. of I., and colleagues reveals what robins thought of various dimensions of fake plastic eggs inserted into their nests. The researchers say the thinner the fake eggs got, the more likely the birds were to remove them from the nest. But curiously, the robins were more cautious about throwing out pointy-sided eggs...