John Hopfield wins Queen Elizabeth Prize for pioneering modern AI
Feb. 5, 2025

Princeton Nobel Laureate in Physics John Hopfield and alumnus Fei-Fei Li of the Class of 1999…

Awards & Honors
Princeton researchers awarded NJ ACTS grant to study dendritic plasticity in neuropsychiatric disorders
Jan. 31, 2025

Princeton neuroscience researchers Sam Wang, Ph.D., and Esra Sefik, Ph.D., were recently awarded a New Jersey Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) pilot grant to investigate how dendrites, the nerve-cell branches that connect neurons, change over time. Their goal: to better understand neurological disorders like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, in which these dendritic structures often go awry. 

Feature
Grants
Christina Kim ’11 joins PNI and Bioengineering to build new molecular tools for healing the brain
Jan. 23, 2025

Kim ’11 returns to Princeton this spring as an incoming assistant professor with a dual appointment in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute. Her research focuses on engineering new molecular tools to replicate the therapeutic benefits of certain drugs, such as psychedelics to relieve anxiety, while minimizing unwanted effects like hallucinations.

New Faculty
A new “hearing test” for rats reveals the brain’s hidden variability when making a decision
Jan. 19, 2025

Simple choices can arise from diverse brain strategies, shedding light on the origins of individual variability

Research
Neuroscience major takes center stage with debut musical on mental health
Jan. 6, 2025

Jeffery Chen is a senior undergraduate at Princeton studying neuroscience and theater. His debut musical, A Life Worth Living, combines aspects of both these fields, while also drawing from a deep well of personal experience. The show recently finished showing on campus at Princeton University, where it ran from 11/8 to 11/16, and was…

Undergraduates
Demystifying Computational Neuropsychiatry
Nov. 22, 2024

How do computational processes help us understand mental health disorders and precisely tailor treatments to each individual? In this episode of Brains, Black Holes, and Beyond, Aanya Kasera sits down with…

Research
“Groundbreaking Studies” Earn Kastner the 2024 Golden Brain Award
Nov. 12, 2024

PNI professor Sabine Kastner, M.D., Ph.D., has won the 2024 Golden Brain Award.

Established in 1983, the annual award given by the Minerva Foundation recognizes an intrepid scientist “…at the forefront of research for significant findings of vision and the…

Awards & Honors
Uri Hasson: Opening the Black Box of the Brain
Nov. 4, 2024

In May 2024, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego, reported that in a series of Turing tests, people could not distinguish the large language model GPT-4 from a human being. The year before, a Stanford-based group of researchers had GPT-4 take the bar exam – and the artificial intelligence passed. GPT-4…

Research
Brain Region Critical for Coping with Chronic Stress Identified in Mice
Oct. 25, 2024

Chronic stress, be it from the covid pandemic, conflict in the Middle East, burnout from work, or any number of reasons, is a leading trigger for mental health issues, like anxiety and depression. Yet, it’s unclear how some people manage to buck stress’ ill effects and are impervious of its insidious influence. Researchers at the Princeton…

Research
PNI's John Hopfield receives Nobel Prize in physics
Oct. 8, 2024

PNI's John Hopfield has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics “for foundational discoveries and…

Awards & Honors
Krienen receives NIH award to investigate what makes the human brain unique
Oct. 8, 2024

Fenna Krienen, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, has received a prestigious award from the NIH to study the outsized development of the neocortex in humans, the part of…

Awards & Honors
Grants
Mapping an entire (fly) brain: A step toward understanding diseases of the human brain
Oct. 2, 2024

For many heartbreaking diseases of the brain — dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and others — doctors can only treat the symptoms. Medical science does not have a cure.

Why? Because it’s difficult to cure what we don’t understand, and the human brain, with its billions of neurons connected by a hundred trillion synapses, is almost…

Research