News - Page 5

SPARK Norway is UiO:Life Science’s innovation programme for health-related life sciences. Meet three of the SPARKees and get inspired to apply.

Congratulations to  Milad Hobbi Mobarhan for defending his thesis "Computational tools for modeling, data storage, and education in Neuroscience" for the degree of PhD on Tuesday 4th September 2018

Head of the Norwegian Centre for Mental Disorders Research (NORMENT) at the University of Oslo, Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Ole A. Andreassen, has been awarded the Bergesen's prize (Bergesenprisen) 2018 for Outstanding Research in Psychiatry.

How our mind can develop and acquire new knowledge, while at the same time preserve memories across a lifetime has been a longstanding question within neuroscience. The new research, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, shows that aggrecan is an essential for the assembly of perineuronal nets and regulation of brain plasticity.

Aggrecan directs extracellular matrix mediated neuronal plasticity. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2018.

UiO:Life Science hopes to see Norwegian finalists in the pitch competition at the tech conference SLUSH in Helsinki on 5 December. The winner is granted 30 000 euros. Life science students and researchers in startups or pre-startups are welcome to apply before 1 October at 12:00.

A major challenge in computational neuroscience is to specify the often large number of parameters that define neuron and neural network models. Many of these parameters have an inherent variability, and some are even actively regulated and change with time.

Researcher Jens Kremkow, of the Neuroscience Research Center of the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, shall be hosting a seminar at the Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo on Monday 3rd September at 3:30pm.

CINPLA's Milad Hobbi Mobarhan will defend his thesis "Computational tools for modeling, data storage, and education in Neuroscience" for the degree of PhD on Tuesday 4th September 2018

In connection with the DigiBrain Project CINPLA members, Svenn-Arne Dragly, Mikkel Lepperød, Torkel Hafting and Marianne Fyhn have been awarded a grant of 50.000NOK from the Centre for Digital Life Norway to help develop their new Data Management software; Exdir and Expipe.

Visually evoked signals in the retina pass through the dorsal geniculate nucleus (dLGN) on the way to the visual cortex. This is however not a simple feedforward flow of information: there is a significant feedback from cortical cells back to both relay cells and interneurons in the dLGN. In this paper the authors use a firing rate model to investigate the functional role of this massive feedback.

The biggest running event in Norway is a relay with 15 legs (about 15km) in the scenic Oslo. This year it was a big duel between University of Oslo and OsloMet. Among the 40+ teams in this group CINPLA was number 1. It was a great summer day with more than 40 000 runners in action.

In this paper the authors propose a standardized storage solution for the wide range of data formats developed by different research groups and commercial companies.

UiO:Life Science shall recruit, educate and develop talents. Before Christmas the initiative announced that students could apply for summer research projects. The board has decided that as many as 66 students will be offered a project in 2018.

Six new teams have been admitted to UiO´s innovation programme SPARK Norway. They will develop their ideas within health-related life sciences for the benefit of patients and society.

Hva kan fysikere bidra med i hjerneforskning? Ph.D student Milad H. Mobarhan gir elever fra den videregående skole et innblikk i dette i sitt glimrende foredrag under universitetets åpen dag. Se forelesningen her.

Neurons’ sugar coating is essential for long-term memories

How the brain is able to store memories over long periods of time has been a persistent mystery to neuroscientists. In a new study, researchers from the Centre for Integrative Neuroplasticity (CINPLA) at the University of Oslo show that long-lived extracellular matrix molecules called perineuronal nets are essential for distant memories.

The new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that removal of the nets disrupts distant but not recent memories. 

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/12/21/1713530115

We're excited to find our paper on perineuronal nets and longterm memories picked by the editors in PNAS to be highlighted in this issue. They have written an excellent recap of our paper.

Society for Neuroscience journals (JNeurosci and eNeuro) published more than 1,150 research manuscripts in 2017. Among the top 10 articles saved to Mendeley is our paper on perineuronal nets in hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and visual cortex.

Postdoc Kristian Lensjø besøkte NRK for å snakke om studiet vårt om langtidsminner.

Erlend Lånke Solbu og Per Olav Alvestad har en podcast "Kuriøs" der de snakker om det siste fra naturvitenskapens verden - idag med Kristian Lensjø som gjest.

https://podtail.com/en/podcast/nrk-kurios/

Slik lagres langtidsminner (in Norwegian only).

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) wrote a piece about our latest publication in PNAS. 

doi: 10.1073/pnas.1713530115

Neurons’ sugar coating is essential for long-term memories

How the brain is able to store memories over long periods of time has been a persistent mystery to neuroscientists. In a new study, researchers from the Centre for Integrative Neuroplasticity (CINPLA) at the University of Oslo show that long-lived extracellular matrix molecules called perineuronal nets are essential for distant memories.

The new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that removal of the nets disrupts distant but not recent memories. 

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/12/21/1713530115

The new innovation programme SPARK Norway at UiO has admitted the first research groups – so called SPARKees. They will develop their ideas within health-related life sciences further for the benefit of patients and society. 

SPARK Norway is a two-year innovation programme to further develop ideas within health-related life sciences for the benefit of patients and society. Researchers from UiO and affiliated research groups at OUS or Ahus can apply UiO:Life Science to be included in the programme.

Congratulations to Mina Martine Frey for successfully defending her Master's thesis on October 31, 2017.