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New Vision in Store for Vanderbilt Eye Institute
The Vanderbilt Eye Institute's future is looking increasingly bright.
“We are committed to making the Vanderbilt Eye Institute one of the great eye programs in the country, a place that delivers great patient care and has a dynamic research component as well,” said Harry Jacobson, M.D., vice chancellor for Health Affairs.
Next March, the program will move into its new home in the South Garage Office Building, a home that will be larger and better suited to deal with a burgeoning volume of patients than its present Medical Center East location.
Full Story
November 12, 2007 |
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Congratulations to Josh Buckholtz
Josh has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2007 APA Science Student Council Early Research Awards. This $1,000 award is to recognize and reward an outstanding student research project completed before the dissertation. Congratulations!
November 12, 2007 |
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Journal of Neuroscience Cover
Cover art for the October 31, 2007 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience featured VVRC investigator Anna Roe's image regarding Symposia and Mini-Symposia titled Disparity Channels in Early Vision.
About the cover
Computation of higher-order binocular disparity. When our left and right eye view a three-dimensional scene, each eye receives a slightly different view of the world, owing to the spatial separation of the eyes in the head. These small differences in the images are called binocular disparity and are one source of information about the distance of objects from the observer. Full Story on Cover Image.
Disparity Channels in Early Vision
The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in our knowledge of the neural basis of stereopsis. New cortical areas have been found to represent binocular disparities, new representations of disparity information (e.g., relative disparity signals) have been uncovered, the first topographic maps of disparity have been measured, and the first causal links between neural activity and depth perception have been established. Full Story on article
November 7, 2007 |
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The Psychological Sciences at Vanderbilt Distinguished Alumnus Lecture
Congratulations to Randolph Blake. Randolph is the first recipient of a new award established to recognize the most outstanding alumni, The Psychological Sciences at Vanderbilt Distinguished Alumnus Lecture. Randolph was selected from the submitted nominations by a committee of faculty from the Department of Psychology and the Department of Psychology and Human Development. He will receive a $500 honorarium and will be invited to give the Distinguish Alumnus Lecture in conjunction with Psychology Day.
October 15, 2007 |
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New low-vision technology aims to make reading easier
Over the past five years, optometrist Jeff Sonsino, O.D., has resorted to an unorthodox prescription for many of his low vision patients — buy a goose neck lamp, use high-powered reading glasses and select a designated reading spot.
Despite an ever-widening approach to vision correcting techniques, the options for a category of patients with low vision are limited. Nationally, there are about 13 million people with low vision — defined as vision that is not correctable with glasses, contact lenses or surgery. The World Health Organization estimates that number to be 124 million worldwide and expects it to double by 2020.
Full Story
October 8, 2007 |
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2007 Fine Science Tool Travel Award
Congratulations to Leslie Dowell, Ayan Ghoshal and Mark Burish for being selected to receive the 2007 Fine Science Tool Travel Award. This award provides $500 towards the cost of attending the Society for Neuroscience meeting.
October 1, 2007 |
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Marvin Chun proves popular with Berkeleyites
Like many college students, Marvin Chun sleeps an average of four hours every night.
But Chun’s sleep deprivation comes from assigning coursework rather than completing it, and from keeping an eye on dormitory parties rather than throwing them.
As the new master of Berkeley College, Chun has joined 11 other prominent figures on campus who balance their duties as professors and administrators with the management of a small community. Chun, a psychology professor, is the first Asian American to become a residential college master — a distinction that he says he is honored by, but that will not define his leadership of Berkeley.
Full Story
September 26, 2007 |
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Congratulations to Ash Jayagopal
Ash and fellow BME student Chinmay Soman presented for a venture capital competition at Oak Ridge National Lab. They finished as runner up and recieved $2500.
Their presentation was about a cancer diagnostic technology which, according to its developers, could be used as a standard test for early detection for many cancers. The underlying technology is a combination of two nanoscale applications – fluorescent semiconductor nanoparticles, and direct self-assembly – with a novel microfluidics-based detection device.
Full Story
September 21, 2007 |
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When in doubt, brain relies on precise timing to perceive brightness
When in doubt about what we see, our brains fill in the gaps for us by first drawing the borders and then ‘coloring’ in the surface area, new research has found. The research is the first to pinpoint the areas in the brain, and the timing of their activity, responsible for how we see borders and surfaces.
Full Story
August 23, 2007 |
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Investigator’s vision research lands award
Min Chang, M.D., assistant professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, has received the Robert E. McCormick Scholar Award from Research to Prevent Blindness (RPB).
The $55,000 award is part of RPB's Special Scholar program, designed to support outstanding young scientists who are conducting research of unusual significance and promise into the causes, treatment, and prevention of blinding diseases.
Full Story
August 3, 2007 |
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Racing neurons control whether we stop or go
In the children’s game “red light, green light,” the winner is able to stop – and take off running again – more quickly than his or her comrades. New research reveals that a similar race takes place in our brains, with impulse control being the big winner.
“The research provides new insights into how the brain controls movements, which helps explain the impulsivity of people with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder,” said study co-author Jeffrey Schall, the E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Neuroscience. “It also shows how mathematical models can be used to discover how the brain produces thought and action.”
Vanderbilt Register • Exploration
April 18, 2007 |
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Collaboration gives boost to glaucoma research
The Vanderbilt Eye Institute's David Calkins, Ph.D., is a member of a novel team of scientists hot on the trail of finding a cure for glaucoma, the world's leading cause of irreversible blindness.
Calkins and three other scientists recently received $7 million from the Glaucoma Research Foundation to be a part of Catalyst for a Cure, a collaborative research consortium created to accelerate the discovery of a glaucoma cure.
Full Story
April 6, 2007
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The Brain on the Stand
It sounds like science fiction, but researchers at Vanderbilt University are completing first-of-its-kind research to literally peer inside a person’s mind and watch how the brain thinks about crime.
Vanderbilt professor Owen Jones, who is one of the nation’s few professors of both law and biology, together with associate professor of psychology and neuroscience René Marois, scanned the brain of participants with a highly sensitive technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI. Their goal was to see which parts of the brain were activated when a person was asked to make a decision on crime and punishment.
VU Cast • The New York Times • Vanderbilt Register
March 12, 2007 |
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Brain Evolution Studies Go Micro
What makes the human brain unique? Researchers are coming up with new answers to that question as they shift their focus from large-scale brain structures to individual neurons and their complex wiring.
"Brain size is one thing, and brain organization is something else," says neuroscientist Todd Preuss of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, a leading member of this avant-garde movement in evolutionary neuroanatomy, and a former member of Jon Kaas's lab.
Full Story
March 12, 2007 |
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Vision course helping faculty and students to see across disciplines
Understanding vision is the focus of Vanderbilt researchers across campus – at the College of Arts and Science, the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering and Peabody College of education and human development. However, seeing one another’s work – and helping their students to do so – is a challenge.
A unique class, “The Visual System,” works to build connections among these researchers and students, who are joined by an interest in vision but separated by their disciplines and majors. Anna Roe is leading the course this semester.
Full Story
March 5, 2007 |
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Researchers find neural 'bottleneck' thwarts multitasking
Many people think they can safely drive while talking on their cell phone. Vanderbilt neuroscientists Paul E. Dux and René Marois have found that when it comes to handling two things at once, your brain, while fast, isn’t that fast.
“Why is it that with our incredibly complex and sophisticated brains, with 100 billion neurons processing information at rates of up to a thousand times a second, we still have such a crippling inability to do two tasks at once?” asked Marois, an associate professor of psychology. “What is it about our brain that gives us such a hard time at being able to drive and talk on a cell phone simultaneously?”
Vanderbilt Register • The Tennessean
A related article March 25, 2007:
Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic
Think you can juggle the phone, e-mail, instant messages and work? New research shows the limits of multitasking.
The New York Times
January 26, 2007 & March 26, 2007 |
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New Chair Bolsters Penn’s Eye Research
John Penn, Ph.D., has been named the first recipient of the Phyllis G. and William B. Snyder, M.D., Chair in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Vanderbilt.
The appointment will allow Penn, professor and vice chair of Ophthalmology and director of research for the Vanderbilt Eye Institute, to further grow his research program in retinal angiogenesis.
Full Story
January 9, 2007 |
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Dr. Anne Corn Receives the 2006 Mary K. Bauman Award
The Mary K. Bauman Award was established to honor an individual who has made significant and outstanding contributions to the education of children and youth who are blind or visually impaired. These leadership contributions have had an impact on a national or international level through their direct effect on visually impaired children or through the example, insight and inspiration that they provided to educators of visually impaired children in other states or nations.
Full Story
January 9, 2007 |
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Journal of Neurophysiology Cover
Cover art for the November issuse of the Journal of Neurophysiology featured VVRC investigator Mike Wallace's article titled Early Experience Determines how the Senses will Interact .
Full Story
January 2, 2007 |
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News Headlines 2006 |
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