Center for Neuroscience

Marie E. Burns, a professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, and Cell Biology and Human Anatomy in the School of Medicine, and a core faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience (CNS), has been appointed the CNS interim director, effective July 1, 2024. 

Felipe Méndez-Salcido, M.D., Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the Hanks Lab at the Center for Neuroscience (CNS) and the UC Davis Conte Center, has been named a 2024 Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences. Dr.

Researchers in the College of Biological Sciences have received a grant to study the role of the cerebellum in autism. “We need a more holistic understanding of the brain circuits that drive this disorder,” says Alex Nord, an associate professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior (NPB), and a researcher at the Center for Neuroscience (CNS). “The cerebellum is a key component that has been largely overlooked until recently.”

Our understanding of schizophrenia has increased greatly in recent years, as studies of large groups of people have identified a multitude of genetic variants that increase a person’s risk of the disease. But each of those individual risk factors accounts for “only a very minor amount of the overall risk,” said Alex Nord, a professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior in the College of Biological Sciences and the Center for Neuroscience.

Charan Ranganath admits he can be forgetful. This is true of most people, but most people are not leading experts on the neuroscience of human memory.

“Everybody knows I have a terrible memory,” said Ranganath, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Davis, “and yet I got a Ph.D. and I publish papers all the time. I'm totally functional, so maybe the expectations we have are just wrong.”

The first time Steve and Tammy Conston set foot on the UC Davis campus, they felt right at home. That visit was a college tour with their youngest son Jacob (B.S.’15, M.S. ’19), and they all sensed that Davis was the right fit. “We just knew, and Jacob knew,” reminisces Tammy. “I know it sounds sappy, but there’s just something about the atmosphere at Davis. You feel like you’re home.”

When it comes to brain anatomy, the thalamus occupies a humble position.  It sits at the top of our brainstem — an apparent vestige of our reptilian past — and is dwarfed by the massive, wrinkled cerebral cortex, which sits above it. The cortex is often credited as the throne of human intellect. But a team of researchers across the country, with UC Davis led by W. Martin Usrey, sees the thalamus as a critical coordinator of our thoughts and perceptions – and pivotal in human disease.

Christina Kim, a faculty member in the Center for Neuroscience and an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurology, has been selected as a 2023 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award recipient. The award, announced last month, is part of the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program.

The main building of the Center for Neuroscience (CNS) has a new name: “Robert D. Grey Hall” in honor of Robert D. Grey, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Emeritus, who served UC Davis and the University of California system for 37 years. The building dedication ceremony was held October 11, 2023.

Why does memory fade? Why does it stay?

These questions, among others, occupy the mind of Charan Ranganath, a UC Davis psychology professor in the UC Davis College of Letters and Science and a core faculty member with the Center for Neuroscience. But the transient nature of memory isn’t just a focal point of Ranganath’s research. It’s something that he, like the rest of us, deals with daily. 

“As a memory researcher, the most common question that I get in my everyday life is, ‘Why am I so forgetful?’” Ranganath said.