Events

Neuroscience Program Lectures, Fall 2013

October 17, 4:45

Sleep in Drosophila melanogaster

Leslie Griffith (Brandeis University)

October 24, 4:45

Losing Cal: The Miraculous Story of a Mother and a Neurologist Treating a Child with an Untreatable Disease

Dr. Maria Kefalis, Wellesley '89 (St. Joseph's University and Co-Founder, The Calliope Joy Foundation) (http://www.thecalliopejoyfoundation.org/node/106)

Dr. Amy Waldman (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and Scientific Advisor, The Calliope Joy Foundation)

This will be a presentation shared between Dr. Maria Kefalis, a sociologist and mother of a child with a child with metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD), and Dr. Amy Waldman, a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). This lecture will touch on the biology of MLD, as well as the sociological and philosophical issues surrounding raising a child with a terminal illness.

MLD is a terminal neurological disease in which children usually do not survive beyond the age of 5. Initially, MLD children develop normally, but the disease reverses every childhood milestone, such as speaking and walking. Children with MLD lack an enzyme in their blood called arylsulfatase A. Without it, the development of the myelin sheath is impaired, and leads to a rapid breakdown in neuronal function.

November 5, 5:00

BrainGate: Brain-computer interfaces for people with paralysis

Beata Jarosiewicz (Brown University)

November 21, 5:00

Scholarship and Ethics

Jeff Blaustein (U Mass Amherst)

December 2, 5:15

This is your brain on steroids: What songbirds teach us about the neural mechanisms of behavior

Luke Remage-Healey (U Mass Amherst)

Past Neuroscience Events