Bunge Lab

http://dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=40904

“Tough seeks to dispel the notion that children from underserved communities are doomed to fail. The basic premise is that, regardless of a child’s IQ, she or he can excel through hard work and perseverance—if given proper encouragement and opportunity. Rather than dwelling on sobering national statistics, which do little to move even the most well-intentioned reader to action, he focuses on the human element. He does this by showing what is possible through the success stories of individual children, teachers, and schools and also by introducing us to top scientists who explain firsthand the significance of their and others’ research on child development and education.”

- Silvia Bunge, Ph.D.

New Education Week article about the Frontiers of Innovation project, which our lab is involved with in Washington:

Overcoming the Impact of Adversity on Learning

Over 30,000 neuroscientists are descending on New Orleans as we speak, for the annual Society for Neuroscience conference. Silvia wishes she could be among them, but is holding down the fort at UC Berkeley this year… We will have two talks at SfN this year:

Kirstie Whitaker will fly back from her new postdoc in the U.K. to speak on Sunday morning in this special session:

And Alison Miller Singley will speak on Monday afternoon about work that she carried out with Allyson Mackey:

Kirstie will show that development of a specific white matter tract in the brain – the left frontoparietal tract – is particularly important for reasoning development from age 6-19 (even after accounting for massive age-related changes in both white matter and reasoning ability over this age range). Alison will show that fMRI is more sensitive than *some* behavioral measures when it comes to measuring the benefits of cognitive training.

Finally, conference-goers will see the artwork of our dear friend Elizabeth Jameson on the cover of a complementary copy of the Journal of Neuroscience: http://www.jneurosci.org/

Astonishing new study

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212007932

Invited commentary from our lab
BungeWhitaker_CurrentBiology2012

Kirstie Whitaker, PhD, gave her exit talk on Friday. It was fabulous. Here she is, supported by the Bunge lab and her family, in from England. We will all miss her!

From left: Chloe Green, Connor Lemos, Lisa Johnson, Sally Bae, Alison Miller Singley, Silvia Bunge, Maia Barrow, Zdena Op de Macks, Forrest Riege, Belén Guerra-Carrillo, and Carter Wendelken

At UC Berkeley, every Ph.D. graduate receives a lollipop when their degree has been conferred. Allyson Mackey and Kirstie Whitaker paid a little visit to Graduate Division on August 10th and received their lollipops! They both started in the Neuroscience program 5 summers ago, both leave the lab at the end of the month, and are both heading to Cambridge for postdocs. Allyson will go to MIT (Cambridge, Mass.) to work with my grad advisor John Gabrieli, and Kirstie will go to the University of Cambridge to work with John Suckling. The lab is in denial at the moment.

Reasoning training alters white matter microstructure

Open-access article:

http://www.frontiersin.org/neuroanatomy/10.3389/fnana.2012.00032/abstract

Science Daily:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120822125222.htm

The Wall Street Journal (misguidedly titled “Why Lawyers Are So Smart”):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20000872396390444230504577615443664768610.html

Etc. And, of course, since this study involved LSAT preparation, it’s been cited in law-related websites, including some fun articles…

http://abovethelaw.com/2012/08/studying-for-the-lsat-makes-you-smarter-at-doing-well-on-the-lsat/

Silvia has been invited to give a Distinguished Scientist Lecture in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. This is not until September, so she may have enough time to grow a distinguished white beard beforehand.