Carney Institute for Brain Science

Study: Electrical stimulation can restore ability to move limbs, receive sensory feedback after spinal cord injury In new results from a clinical trial, researchers show that electrical stimulation of the spinal cord can restore the muscle control and sensory feedback required for coordinated walking movements.

In new results from a clinical trial, Carney affiliated researchers show that electrical stimulation of the spinal cord can restore the muscle control and sensory feedback required for coordinated walking movements:
www.brown.edu/news/2026-03-11/spinal-cord-stimulation

Community Spotlight: running a study helped ARC alum rekindle her passion Chelsie Benca-Bachman used the Advancing Research Careers program to study the relationship between sleep and PTSD.

Carney's most recent Community Spotlight tells the story of how @bbchelsie.bsky.social rekindled her passion for science through Carney's Advancing Research Careers program. Get the full story here: carney.brown.edu/news/2026-02-09/chelsie-benca-bachman

Study reveals insights about brain regions linked to OCD, informing potential treatments Researchers found differences in how brain regions work together during certain cognitive tasks, which may help clinicians more effectively treat and assess obsessive-compulsive disorder.

@desrocherslab.bsky.social's OCD research is informing potential treatments: www.brown.edu/news/2026-02-06/ocd-brain

Brown University professor John Donoghue wins Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Donoghue was awarded the prize, considered among the most prestigious honors in engineering, for pioneering work in developing brain-computer interfaces, which enable the restoration of voluntary comm...

Professor John Donoghue has been awarded a Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. Read the story here: www.brown.edu/news/2026-02-03/donoghue-qeprize

2025 Winners, Finalists and Mentors The National Institute on Aging has selected 21 finalists and 39 mentors for Stage 1 of the 2025 Start-Up Challenge and Accelerator.

Big congrats to Yu-Wen Alvin Huang and Ryan O'Rourke! Their start-up, Acre Therapeutics, is a winner of the 2025 NIA Start-Up Challenge:

www.nia.nih.gov/research/sbir/startup-challenge/2025-winners-finalists-and-mentors

Faculty at Brown earn prominent awards, distinctions in Fall 2025 Over the fall semester, prestigious national and international organizations recognized Brown faculty for their research, service, scholarship and leadership.

Congrats to @jonescompneurolab.bsky.social, @desrocherslab.bsky.social and Leenoy Meshulam for being recognized by Brown on their recent awards from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NYU and the Allen Institute! Check it out: www.brown.edu/news/2026-01-15/faculty-awards

Is bioluminescence the key to safe, effective brain imaging? The Bioluminescence Hub at Brown, a collaborative team of neuroscientists from around the U.S., found a way to harness light to safely and effectively measure activity in living brain cells.

CaBLAM uses bioluminescent light to measure activity in living brain cells. 34-plus researchers across the U.S. affiliated with Carney’s Bioluminescence Hub contributed to its development. See the images CaBLAM makes possible here: www.brown.edu/news/2025-12-12/bioluminescence-brain-imaging-tool

Carney presenters stand out at SfN 2025 Alice Lin, Vanessa Rivera Núñez, Alisa Salazar, Lewis Núñez Severino and Zachary Uttke presented on findings that will advance research into Alzheimer's disease, developmental disorders, an epilepsy s...

Check out SfN presentations from the Carney community: Alice Lin on an epilepsy syndrome, Vanessa Rivera Núñez on pattern recognition, Alisa Salazar on developmental disorders, Lewis Núñez Severino on MDMA-assisted therapy and Zachary Uttke on Alzheimer's disease.

carney.brown.edu/news/2025-12...

New Carney Institute faculty member Leenoy Meshulam, June and Howard Zimmerman Assistant Professor of Brain Science, Assistant Professor of Physics and Neuroscience

New faculty member Leenoy Meshulam is an @alleninstitute.org's Next Generation Leader. In this latest review, she and co-author William Bialek detail new possibilities for statistical mechanics in understanding neuronal networks. journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract...

From prediction to understanding: Will AI foundation models transform brain science? Deep-learning approaches using massive data have transformed AI and are reshaping science. We ask when AI foundation models will transform neuroscience, outlining critical success conditions and a shi...

In their NeuroView, out in Neuron this week, Ellie Pavlick and @thomasserre.bsky.social ask, “Will AI foundation models transform neuroscience?”
www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273%2825%2900752-4

Gossiping Is Smarter Than You Think The mental machinery that helps us spread rumors also helps us thrive in an interconnected world.

Op-ed from Oriel FeldmanHall, featuring insights from her work: "Social networks typically include ... tens of thousands of possible connections. To predict where a piece of gossip might travel, you need to calculate which of many paths it might travel. That is a staggering amount of mental math."

Researchers uncover similarities between human and AI learning By working to understand how new AI systems integrate flexible and incremental learning, researchers gained insights about the human brain.

Analyzing strengths and weaknesses of different learning strategies in an artificial neural network offers new insights about the human brain:

For Some Patients, the ‘Inner Voice’ May Soon Be Audible

Incredible work on brain-computer interface technology that can decode "imagined" inner speech. The research team, led by Stanford University, includes Carney-affiliated Professor of Engineering Leigh Hochberg and Brown alumni David Brandman PhD’18, MD, and Sergey Stavisky ’08 of UC Davis.

Empowering graduate students to think entrepreneurially about brain technology Graduate students from Brown University and Ben-Gurion University put their brains together in a unique summer practicum to invent and pitch ideas for neurotechnology startups.

July ended on a high note! Read about the "Dolphin Tank" that is starting to become a favorite summer tradition:

$1.3 million grant to Brown to expand research on the role of blood-brain barrier in decision making Researchers from Brown’s Carney Institute will investigate how the blood-brain barrier is involved in transmitting information to the brain, informing potential treatments for brain diseases and disor...

New work from the Moore lab could reveal an unexpected role for the blood-brain barrier in how we make decisions:

Social success not about who you know – it’s about knowing who knows whom Knowledge trumps popularity in the long haul of trying to be influential, researchers say

New work from the lab of Brown University researcher
Oriel FeldmanHall reveals an unexpected key to becoming influential in your social network:

Golden eyes: How gold nanoparticles may one day help to restore people’s vision A team of Brown University researchers has identified a promising new approach that may one day help to restore vision in people affected by macular degeneration and other retinal disorders.

A new study by Carney researchers suggests that gold nanoparticles injected into the retina can successfully stimulate the visual system and restore vision in mice with retinal disorders.

Could blocking ‘jumping genes’ help fight disease and aging? The first clinical trials are testing inhibitors of transposons, DNA sequences that hop around the genome on their own

Could blocking ‘jumping genes’ treat diseases and aging? Brown researchers Bess Frost, director of Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research, and John Sedivy, director of the Center for the Biology of Aging, are featured in the latest Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... #brownbrainscience

The reptile brain is real Carney scientists have discovered that the part of the cerebral cortex that processes smell is similar in mice, reptiles and amphibians–a surprising finding that rewrites the story about the evolution...

New findings published in @natureneuro.bsky.social by the lab of Alexander Fleischmann, Provost's Professor of Brain Science at Brown University, show surprising similarities between the mouse olfactory cortex and the cerebral cortices of reptiles and amphibians. bit.ly/4joIGkr #BrownBrainScience 🧠

With a storied past stretching back more than a century, the Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences at Brown University is stepping into its future. Learn more about our key partners who study the mind - and where they're headed. bit.ly/4l8SMaO #BrownBrainScience 🧠

From software to sensors, models to molecules, tools made by Carney researchers not only fuel brain science discovery at Brown, but at thousands of university, nonprofit and private labs on five continents. Check out our ingenious inventions - and inventors at bit.ly/4l1N6iV

#BrownBrainScience 🧠

We're so excited to see what you learn!

The @carneyinstitute.bsky.social Zimmerman Innovation Awards in Brain Science have killer ROI with about $5M in seed funds resulting in $166 million in external funding for projects on Alzheimer's disease to autism to AI. Details on this year's crop of awards: bit.ly/3XyiSd5

#BrownBrainScience 🧠

Bird brains help scientists to unveil the secrets of speech Neural underpinnings of vocalization in zebra finches and budgerigars.

Neural recordings from parrots and songbirds reveal the ways in which vocal production is encoded in the brain, highlighting remarkable similarities between how parrots and humans learn to produce sounds.

https://go.nature.com/4bImwai

Associate director, @cimoore444.bsky.social, spoke at last week's National Academy of Engineering symposium to talk neuroengineering - a field pioneered at Brown - and how it can be harnessed to do the seemingly impossible. Like cross the blood brain barrier to deliver AD drugs. bit.ly/3DEUX58 🧠

Psssst: Brain science is the best science. And we got to share the secret with Rhode Island on Saturday, when families packed the Brown Brain Fair to learn about our beautiful brains and how research makes the discovery possible. The full scoop: bit.ly/2025brainfair

#BrownBrainScience 🧠

Free, family-friendly, fun!

Come out for the Brown Brain Fair powered by local high schoolers and @carneyinstitute grad students. You'll find lots of hands-on goodness: games, art, and demos plus fast, fun science talks. Open to all.

🧩 💯 🎨 🔥 🌈 🔬 ✋

#BrownBrainScience 🧠

This month a new concentration launches at Brown - computational neuroscience - and Ah-Young Moon was the first to declare. Brown is one of a handful of U.S. schools to offer it to undergrads in a move that's quintessentially Brown: student-led and cross-disciplinary. The scoop: bit.ly/4hqFC65 🧠 💻

The biology of addiction Insights into the biology of addiction and their potential translation into advances in therapy are discussed.

Recent discoveries are reshaping how scientists understand the neuroscience and biology of drug addiction, according to a new #ScienceSignaling Review that discusses the latest findings, future research priorities, and emerging therapies. scim.ag/3DguvOY