Failing Frontal Lobes

In today's episode, Amanda Mason, our newest producer and an MD/PhD student here at UCSF, interviews Dr. Bruce Miller, the director of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center. Dr. Miller's clinic is considered one of the best places in the world for dementia diagnosis and treatment. He shares his perspective on frontotemporal dementia, a devastating brain disorder that affects personality, empathy, and language—and the search for a cure.

Also check out the more detailed producer's cut.

More on the Miller Lab's research

Tapping into the Brain's Avoidance Centers: Garret Stuber

Traditionally, dopamine is known to transmit reward signals (food, sex, etc.) in the brain and promote behaviors that lead to that reward again. What you may not know, however, is that the area of the brain that releases dopamine, the ventral midbrain, also receives signals of aversion (things we find unpleasant or even dangerous) from a far-off brain region called the lateral habenula. These avoidance signals promote behaviors that lead us to avoid unpleasant or dangerous things in the world.

These brain circuits are necessary for survival and are the focus of Dr. Garret Stuber and his laboratory at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Using a tool known as optogenetics, Dr. Stuber can excite specific populations of neurons within mouse brains and observe their effects on behavior. For example, by stimulating the neurons in the lateral habenula that signal aversion, he can cause mice to avoid the location in which they received that stimulation. He is essentially creating an aversive stimulus by stimulating the neurons that would normally respond to harmful or unpleasant cues in the world. His work has important implications in addiction and psychiatric disorders

More on the Stuber Lab's research

Hosted by Osama Ahmed

How the brain responds to pheromones: Lisa Stowers

Our brains are responsible for helping us understand and move around in the world. What we perceive through our senses is transformed into electrical activity in our brains, and that activity determines how we act and respond to the environment. Yet, scientists are unclear about how brain cells carry out this transformation.

Our guest this month is Dr. Lisa Stowers from the Scripps Research Institute. Her lab uses mice to study how chemical signals known as pheromones activate particular groups of neurons, and how this activity produces instinctive behaviors of fear, attraction, and aggression. By studying this system, Dr. Stowers hopes to shed new light on how the brain processes senses and generates behavior.

More on the Stowers Lab's research

Producer: Sama Ahmed

The Social Worm: Cori Bargmann

What controls the way we behave? Our guest this week, Dr. Cornelia Bargmann, hopes to answer this complicated question. She explains how our biology, our genes, and the environment we live in can affect the way we behave. She is especially interested in understanding social behaviors, or how animals interact with each other. In her research, she uses the humble worm, known as c. elegans, to study the underlying biology that can switch an individual from being a loner to a party animal, and vice versa.

Cori is a professor at The Rockefeller University and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has recently been featured in the Charlie Rose Brain Series and The New York Times.

For an additional teaching resource, check out the lesson plan we created to accompany this episode.

More on the Bargmann Lab's research

Hosted by Osama Ahmed

How do hormones control sex-specific behaviors?: Nirao Shah

Dr. Nirao Shah is an assistant professor at the University of California – San Francisco.

Nirao is interested in how the brains of males and females can be so similar and yet make males and females act so differently. Here, he sits down with me to talk about his work in understanding how hormones control sex-specific behaviors. He discusses some of his recent discoveries which seem counterintuitive at first.

More on the Shah Lab's research

Hosted by Sama Ahmed

Figuring out the role of neurons in zebrafish swimming: Herwig Baier

He wants to know how brain cells (neurons) give rise to behavior. He explains to us how he is using light to turn on neurons in the zebrafish brain to understand how these cells affect the fish’s swimming.

More on the Baier Lab's research

Producer: Sama Ahmed