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CSHL neuroscientists focus on understanding how neural connections in the brain translate into behavior. Their research provides insights into the circuitry underlying complex cognitive processes such as decision-making and attention, as well as developing tools to map circuit disruptions associated with neurological disorders, like Alzheimers disease, autism, schizophrenia and depression.

Neuroscience research at CSHL is centered on three broad themes: sensory processing, cognition, andmental disorders.Sensory processing research explores how sensory experiences, like sound, smell, and sight, are integrated with decision-making. The cognition group uses the tools ofmodern neuroscience (genetic, molecular, physiology and imaging) tostudy the neural circuitry that underlies attention, memory, and decision-making. Researchers also study cognitivedisorders, defining the genetic basis ofdiseases like autism and schizophrenia and identifying the neural circuits that are disrupted in these disorders. In addition, there is an effort to develop new anatomical methods to improve our understanding of brain circuits, connectivity, and function.

Much of the work is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary. Many neuroscientists apply physics, math, and engineering principles to the study of cognition, including research funded by theSwartz Foundation. TheStanley Center for Cognitive Genomicsintegrates genetics and neuroscience to form a dual-strategy aimed at improving the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and other cognitive disorders.

January 31, 2019

Weve all learned about math in school. For many of us, it calls to mind exercises like bisecting geometric shapes and cracking algebraic equations. But what does math have to do with researching the brain? Computational neuroscientists like Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Assistant Professor Tatiana Engel use math to better understand how networks in...

January 25, 2019

Eve Marder, the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience at Brandeis University, has been awarded the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award in the Neurosciences. Dr. Marder is a member of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Scientific Advisory Council, an external advisory group that advises CSHLs senior management on science matters. Dr. Marder...

January 18, 2019

Cold Spring Harbor, NY The ideal drug is one that only affects the exact cells and neurons it is designed to treat, without unwanted side effects. This concept is especially important when treating the delicate and complex human brain. Now, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have revealed a mechanism that could lead to...

January 18, 2019

On January 13th, local non-profit Austins Purpose donated $10,000 to fund Professor Hiro Furukawas neuroscience research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Representatives from Austins Purpose presented a check to Diane Fagiola, CSHLs Senior Director of Philanthropy, at a communion breakfast hosted by the Columbiettes of the St. Regis Council of Knights of Columbus, in...

December 26, 2018

Its hard to have missed the acronym CRISPR this year! Headlines in the news have heralded game changing possibilities in biomedicine. Controversy and debate continue to sizzle worldwide among scientists and policymakers over the ethical implications of gene editing in humans. At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), though, CRISPR isnt just about headlines. It is...

December 5, 2018

Cold Spring Harbor, NY How is it that a sound can send a chill down your spine? By observing individual brain cells of mice, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) are understanding how a sound can incite fear. Investigator Bo Li focuses on a part of the mouse brain called the amygdala where...

October 31, 2018

Cold Spring Harbor, NY Is bigger really better? When it comes to sample sizes in experiments to understand decision-making, a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) team found that testing more subjects in more trials is not only better, but necessary, to truly grasp what an individual is thinking. A horde of mice and half-a-million...

October 15, 2018

Join us for the next edition of Cocktails & Chromosomes, featuring computational neuroscientistTatiana Engel, Ph.D., an assistant professor at CSHL Our brains are doing math all the time math that makes it possible for us to see a movie, make coffee, or even to know who we are. Dr. Tatiana Engel will talk about...

October 2, 2018

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Florin Albeanu and Professor Alexei Koulakov have received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Directors Transformative Research Award for an innovative neuroscience research project on the olfactory system, one of the basic senses that is still quite mysterious. The project will study how the brain interprets smell, an...

September 27, 2018

Data is crucial. But, without the proper tools to analyze it, data cannot be properly evaluated to reach credible conclusions. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Assistant Professor Tatiana Engel is helping build computational tools for data collected specifically from the brain, and has been awarded a Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative grant...

September 14, 2018

Cold Spring Harbor, NY Perfectly normal events can have disastrous consequences when they happen at the wrong time. Take, for example, a horse race, says Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Alea Mills. The action begins when the competitors are allowed to burst forth from the starting gate. But if a gate is broken, allowing...

August 16, 2018

Genetic fate-mapping technologies developed by (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) Professor Josh Huang and colleagues show in exquisite detail how an important part of the mammalian brainhere, a mouse brainself-assembles over a few short weeks during the embryonic period. In the sequence featured below, follow the emergence of the striatum, a brain area that enables information...

August 16, 2018

We think of ourselves as unique individuals, yet developmental biology reveals what all of us must have in common before our experiences even begin to differentiate us. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Josh Huang and his team show in these images how a program that has evolved over eons and is imprinted in genes unfurls...

August 8, 2018

Anthony Zador, a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) professor and the Alle Davis and Maxine Harrison Endowed Chair of Neurosciences, has been named a Gill Symposium Transformative Investigator for his work on MAPseq. The prize honors researchers who have made exceptional contributions to cellular or molecular neuroscience. MAPseq (Multiplexed Analysis of Projections by Sequencing) is...

June 29, 2018

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratorys Alex Vaughan was awarded the 2018 Alexandria LaunchLabs Seed Capital Prize for the CSHL spinoff company MapNeuro Inc. during the NYC Life Science Innovation Showcase, held in New York City on June 14, 2018. Valued at $100,000, the prize, meant to fund early-stage development companies, includes a scholarship to Alexandria LaunchLabs,...

June 25, 2018

Dhananjay Huilgol, a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Z. Josh Huangs lab, has been awarded one of Indias highest honors for young investigators. Huilgol has won the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Young Scientist award for his doctoral research in the field of developmental neuroscience. During his time at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in...

June 6, 2018

Moving forward by moving backward more effectively Cold Spring Harbor, NY New technologies have been likened, famously, to magic. At first, even the few who understand how they work have a tendency to sit back and marvel. Soon, flaws and limitations are detected and the invention process begins again, resulting, almost always, in improvements....

May 29, 2018

Research suggests a possible target for future anti-anxiety drugs Cold Spring Harbor, NY Neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have identified a neural circuit in the amygdala, the brains seat of emotion processing, that gives rise to anxiety. Their insight has revealed the critical role of a molecule called dynorphin, which could serve...

May 25, 2018

Join us for the next edition of Cocktails & Chromosomes, featuring developmental neuroscientistJessica Tollkuhn, Ph.D., an assistant professor at CSHL Men are from Mars and women are from Venus? NOT QUITE Estrogen and testosterone drive mood, aggression, preferences and behavior in both males and females, but how? Dr. Jessica Tollkuhn will talk about howhormone surgesin...

May 11, 2018

Since 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has consistently advanced the frontiers of research and education in biology. How we have come so far is remarkable, considering that Darwins theory of evolution and Mendels explanation of genetics were at the cutting edge little more than a century ago. Curiosity-driven research, innovation and risk-taking underlie our...

May 2, 2018

Please join us for the East Coast Film Premiere of theTianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute(TCCI)s documentary,MINDS WIDE OPEN: Unlocking the potential of the human brain. A revolution in technology is helping scientists unlock the mysteries of the most complex object in the universe: the human brain. Created by Tianqiao Chen, Chrissy Luo and award-winning producer,...

April 27, 2018

At noon every Tuesday from September through June, scenes from a revolution in neuroscience are playing out at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Week after week, over 100 scientists cram themselves into a ground-floor meeting room in the Beckman Laboratory. Its standing-room only as everyone in the Neuroscience Program settles in to hear details of the...

March 28, 2018

Cold Spring Harbor, NY Using a revolutionary new brain-mapping technology recently developed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), an international team of scientists led by Professor Anthony Zador have made a discovery that will force neuroscientists to rethink how areas of the cortex communicate with one another. The new technology, called MAPseq, allowed the...

December 28, 2017

CSHL Professor Bo Li and two collaborators at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) have been awarded a new grant under the BRAIN Initiative of the National Institutes of Health. The award of $5 million, apportioned over five years, supports research to better understand how paired structures called amygdalae, set deep in the brain, are...

December 11, 2017

In recognition of her efforts to promote and mentor women in neuroscience, Associate Professor Anne Churchland was honored with The Louise Hanson Marshall Special Recognition Award at the Society for Neurosciences 2017 Annual Meeting in November. Each year, the award goes to an individual who has significantly promoted the professional development of women in neuroscience...

November 22, 2017

What you see here is not a pointillist masterpiece. It is a rendering of the mouse brain, from above, formed by millions of colored dots. Like the famous canvases painted by post-Impressionist Georges Seurat, the triumph of this image is in the relation of the dots themselves. Each colored dot is an inhibitory neuron, and...

November 21, 2017

For neuroscientists, the brain presents an almost endless number of mysteries to be solved. Assistant Professor Tatiana Engel, the newest addition to CSHLs Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, is focused on the dynamics of neural circuits. She wants to understand the role of changing neural activity patterns in decision-making and attention. While earning her doctorate...

November 2, 2017

Cold Spring Harbor, NY One of the most hopeful discoveries of modern neuroscience is firm proof that the human brain is not static following birth. Rather, it is continually renewing itself, via a process called postnatal neurogenesisliterally, the birth of new neurons. It begins not long after birth and continues into old age. There is...

October 31, 2017

LabDish blog Tracking a personentails searching through their email, phone, and other means of communication to map outtheir network. To do this for a brain cell, more creativity is called for. After more than a century of investigation into the diverse cells of the brain, neuroscientists still are not sure what exactly makes one neuron...

October 23, 2017

Cold Spring Harbor, NY Our brains wire themselves up during development according to a series of remarkable genetic programs that have evolved over millions of years. But so much of our behavior is the product of things we learn only after we emerge from the womb. We arent born with instructions to avoid putting...

October 5, 2017

A multiyear project in the Brain Initiative, qBrain is already revealing the brain as never before Cold Spring Harbor, NY Neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have mobilized advanced imaging and computational methods to comprehensively mapcountthe total populations of specific types of cells throughout the mouse brain. In a study published today in...

October 2, 2017

Last month, the announcement of International Brain Laboratory (IBL) made headlines because of its unusual approach to a fundamental mystery of neuroscience: what happens in the brain when it makes a decision? Associate Professor Anne Churchland, who co-founded the IBL along with Professor Tony Zador, explains how it could help solve a problem in neuroscience....

September 21, 2017

Families of genes encoding proteins involved in communication across synapses define neurons by determining which cells they connect with and how they communicate Cold Spring Harbor, NY In a major step forward in research, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) today publish in Cell a discovery about the molecular-genetic basis of neuronal cell...

August 21, 2017

Inhibitory chandelier cells receive and transmit information from different ensembles of excitatory cells in their cortical neighborhood Cold Spring Harbor, NY The brains astonishing anatomical complexity has been appreciated for over 100 years, when pioneers first trained microscopes on the profusion of branching structures that connect individual neurons. Even in the tiniest areas of...

August 1, 2017

Cold Spring Harbor, NY Neuroscientist Adam Kepecs of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has been selected to lead a new research project that is part of the US governments BRAIN Initiative, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today. Kepecs, a CSHL Professor, will work with colleagues to develop conceptual infrastructure for behavioral neuroscience research....

July 20, 2017

Opening the hormonal black box yields some surprises about sex Cold Spring Harbor, NY Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have opened a black box in the brain whose contents explain one of the remarkable yet mysterious facts of life. Its been known for decades that an event occurring on the very first...

May 16, 2017

LabDish blog Confidence is not just a feeling, according to neuroscientist Adam Kepecs. Finding the confidence-calculating circuitry in our brains has huge implications for the future of psychiatry. When someone asks you how confident you are about something, you probably dont offer an answer like 5 or some other number. Youre more likely to say...

March 27, 2017

Do genome-defending anti-transposon systems collapse in ALS patients? Stony Brook and Cold Spring Harbor, NY By inserting an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)-linked human gene called TDP-43 into fruit flies, researchers at Stony Brook University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) discovered a potential role for transposons in the disease. Transposons, which are also called jumping...

March 13, 2017

LabDish blog Written by Annabel Romero Hernandez Memories may seem intangible, but many scientists are working to figure out how they are physically stored in the brain. To achieve this, well need to understand memories at the molecular level. When we talk about memories, its usually in the context of something precious, like a beloved...

January 4, 2017

Austin Wasielewski, born in May 2003, at first appeared to be a healthy, strong boy. About three months into his life his parents noticed his jerking motions and realized he wasnt meeting developmental goals. On Thanksgiving Day 2003, Austin had his first myoclonic seizure. Throughout his first eight years of life he would have up...

December 14, 2016

BasePairs podcast One in six people suffers from a mental disorder, and yet, compared to cancer and infectious disease, neuropsychiatric treatment options have barely improved in decades! Why is that? In this episode of Base Pairs, we talk to Stanford Professor Robert Malenka about the limitations that classic business practices place on modern drug development....

October 27, 2016

LabDish blog What appears to be a few elegant houses tucked in the woods by the harbor is actually an epicenter of ideas in biology, fromthe iconic Human Genome Projectin the late 1980s to the more down-to-earth subject of Lyme disease at this recent meeting. Maybe its no surprise that the Banbury Center has gained...

September 21, 2016

Cold Spring Harbor, NY Imagine if every time you got in your car, you fired it up, put it in drive, slammed on the gas, and didnt let up until you reached your destination. Now imagine every driver on the road did the same thing. It would be pile up after pile up. A...

August 19, 2016

MAPseq uses RNA sequencing to rapidly and inexpensively find the diverse destinations of thousands of neurons in a single experiment in a single animal Cold Spring Harbor, NY Neuroscientists today publish in Neuron details of a revolutionary new way of mapping the brain at the resolution of individual neurons, which they have successfully demonstrated...

June 1, 2016

LabDish blog Too many scientists become limited by the availability of expensive, sophisticated tools, according to CSHL Associate Professor Florin Albeanu. He hopes to change that by essentially teaching a DIY approach to neuroscience. Do-it-yourself (DIY) science evokes images of amateur scientists tinkering with test tubes in garages on the weekends. So, at first, the...

May 4, 2016

The brain produces feelings of confidence that inform decisions the same way statistics pulls patterns out of noisy data Cold Spring Harbor, NY The directions, which came via cell phone, were a little garbled, but as you understood them: Turn left at the 3rd light and go straight; the restaurant will be on your...

May 2, 2016

Cold Spring Harbor, NY Structural biologists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and Janelia Research Campus/HHMI, have obtained snapshots of the activation of an important type of brain-cell receptor. Dysfunction of the receptor has been implicated in a range of neurological illnesses, including Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, depression, seizure, schizophrenia, autism, and injuries related...

March 15, 2016

LabDish blog With the flick of a switch, neuroscientist Matt Kaufman can send out billions of extremely brief laser pulses that will help him understand how brains make decisions. Every time you decide to grab a coffee mug, your brain quickly performs an elaborate string of calculations: it visually recognizes the mug, chooses how you...

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