News

Toulmin Pilot Projects Selected, August 29, 2024

A GUMC panel chose faculty from several BGE programs to receive funding for their research in 2025 through the Toulmin Pilot Projects.

A Brain Fingerprint: Study Uncovers Unique Brain Plasticity in People Born Blind, July 30, 2024

A study led by Georgetown neuroscientists reveals that the part of the brain that receives and processes visual information in sighted people develops a unique connectivity pattern akin to a fingerprint in people born blind.

Understanding How to Best Transform Speech into Tactile Vibrations Could Benefit Hearing-Impaired People – Max Riesenhuber, PhD, May 17, 2023

Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center, in collaboration with George Washington University, leveraged their understanding of auditory speech processing in the brain to enable volunteers to perceive speech through the sense of touch. This may aid in the design of novel sensory substitution devices — swapping sound for touch, for example — for hearing-impaired people.

Integrative Neuroscience Student Wins McCourt Public Policy Challenge, April 24, 2023

M.S. in Integrative Neuroscience student Sparsha Muralidhara was a winner in the McCourt School of Public Policy’s 2023 Georgetown Public Policy Challenge. Muralidhara worked with law student William Macci on their proposal, E-QualityDC, which empowers D.C. public schools to bridge the digital divide for at-risk students, connecting families to accessible and affordable resources.

Bilingual Children May Lose Less Brain Matter as They Grow Up – Michael Ullman, PhD, Sept. 2, 2020

“It may be the case that the effects on the brain that we have seen in adult bilinguals have their roots in childhood. We will be looking more at this in future studies.”

Increased matrix metalloproteinase levels and perineuronal net proteolysis in the HIV-infected brain; relevance to altered neuronal population dynamics – Italo Mocchetti, PhD et. al, Jan, 2020

HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) continue to persist despite effective control of viral replication. Although the mechanisms underlying HAND are poorly understood, recent attention has focused on altered neuronal population activity as a correlate of impaired cognition.

When your Brain is Overstimulated, It Can Forget Things You Just Saw – Max Riesenhuber, PhD, Oct. 23, 2019

Sometimes our brains can’t keep up with processing everything, and we wind up not realizing we saw certain details we did, in fact, see. Now, a group of neuroscientists have figured out why people experience this so-called “crash in visual processing.”