News Releases

Human brain organoids are remarkable platforms for modeling features of human brain development and diseases. Building on methods to generate organoids to model different brain regions such as the cortex and the midbrain, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have generated the first organoids of the arcuate nucleus (ARC), an essential structure in the hypothalamus that sends signals of hunger and feeling full.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement (CURE) program announced it will award a $3.5 million grant to Penn Medicine researchers and community partners to address the underrepresentation of Black adults in Alzheimer’s Disease research.

Art appreciation is considered essential to human experience. While taste in art varies depending on the individual, cognitive neuroscience can provide clues about how viewing art affects our neural systems, and evaluate how these systems inform our valuation of art.

The Penn Nerve Center is led by Zarina Ali, MD, MS, FAANS, an assistant professor of Neurosurgery, and L. Scott Levin, MD, FACS, FAOA, chair of the department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and a professor of Plastic Surgery in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Combining experts in neurosurgery, orthopaedics, plastic surgery, physical medicine and rehab, neurology, and radiology, the Center is the first of its kind in the region.

New research led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows that a single head injury could lead to dementia later in life. This risk further increases as the number of head injuries sustained by an individual increases.

“Understanding the psychology of the ‘anomalous-is-bad’ stereotype can help, for example, in the design of interventions to educate the public about the social burdens shouldered by people who look different,” said lead author Clifford Workman, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics.

Ingo Helbig, MD, a pediatric neurologist in the Division of Neurology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, director of the genomic and data science core of the CHOP Epilepsy Neurogenetics Initiative, and Assistant Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named a recipient of a 2019 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award.

The majority of patients who followed an “Enhanced Recovery After Surgery” (ERAS) protocol did not need opioids for pain management at multiple time points following elective spinal and peripheral nerve surgery.

Inherited mutations in a gene that keeps nerve cells intact was shown, for the first time, to be a driver of a neuropathy known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease.

The Penn Brain Science, Translation, Innovation, and Modulation (brainSTIM) Center brings together a team of leading neuroscientists, neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and engineers at Penn using neuromodulation techniques to research, repair, and enhance human brain function—the first translational center of its kind in the region.