Co-lead of HSCI's Nervous System Diseases Program Paola Arlotta and postdoctoral fellow Giorgia Quadrato have produced long-cultured brain organoids that have the potential to advance our understanding of...
Building on earlier work in which they disproved neurobiology dogma by “reprogramming” neurons — turning one form of neuron into another — in the brains of living animals, Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have now shown that the networks of communication among reprogrammed neurons and their neighbors can also be changed, or “rewired.”
From his days in graduate school, through his postdoctoral fellowship, and now as a Harvard Stem Cell scientist, John Rinn, PhD, has been digging through the bulk of the human genome, challenging the prevailing belief that the bulk of the genome is biological “junk.” Ever since the Human Genome Project decoded the genome, the prevailing view has been that only the two percent of the genome making proteins, the building blocks of cells, was important. The rest of the genome was deemed not functional, or “junk.”... Read more about Unique collaborative effort proves value of some “junk” genes
To an untrained observer, the electrical storm that takes place over the brain’s neural network seems a chaotic flurry of activity. But as neuroscientists understand it, the millions of neurons are actually engaged in a sort of tightly choreographed dance, a tango of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. How is...
Co-lead of HSCI's Nervous System Diseases Program Paola Arlotta and postdoctoral fellow Giorgia Quadrato have produced long-cultured brain organoids that have the potential to advance our understanding of...
A new finding by Harvard stem cell biologists turns one of the basics of neurobiology on its head by demonstrating that it is possible to turn one type of already differentiated neuron into another within the brain.... 
To an untrained observer, the electrical storm that takes place over the brain’s neural network seems a chaotic flurry of activity. But as neuroscientists understand it, the millions of neurons are actually engaged in a sort of tightly choreographed dance, a tango of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. How is...