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Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
Jan 07, 2021... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—January 7, 2021—Some people lose their eyesight, yet continue to “see.” This phenomenon, a kind of vivid visual hallucination, is named after Swiss doctor Charles Bonnet, who described in 1769 how his completely blind grandfather experienced intense, detailed visions of people, animals, and objects. Charles Bonnet syndrome was investigated in a study led by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The findings, published in Brain, suggest a mechanism by which normal, spontaneous activity in the visual centers of the brain can trigger visual hallucinations in the blind.
Jan 09, 2021...
Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have found what they say might be the cause of "Charles Bonnet syndrome," a phenomenon in which blind people continue to "see" due to vivid visual hallucinations. The research also indicated that the same visual system that humans use to see is active when humans hallucinate or even imagine.
The findings, published in the journal Brain, show a mechanism which may enable normal activity in the brain's vision centers to trigger the hallucinations in the blind. Researchers revealed a connection between resting-state brain fluctuations - mysterious but common brain occurrences which happen when humans are not conscious - and visual hallucinations in the blind.
Jan 28, 2021... Danielle Reed stopped counting after the 156th email arrived in a single afternoon. It was late March, and her laboratory at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia had abruptly gone into Covid-19 lockdown. For weeks, there had been little to do. Reed, who is famous in her field for helping to discover a new family of receptors that perceive bitter flavors, had spent years studying the way human genetics affect the way we experience smell and taste. It was important but niche science that seemingly had little to do with a dangerous respiratory virus spreading around the globe.
May 27, 2021...
The Bat-Tunnel: A Unique Setup for the Study of the Neural Basis of Navigation
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—May 27, 2021—The brain is often likened to a computer: neurons organized in complex circuits serving as its hardware; its software a plethora of codes that govern the neurons’ behavior. But sometimes the brain performs exceptionally well even when its hardware seems inadequate for the task; for example, the puzzle of how we and other mammals manage to navigate large-scale environments even though the brain’s spatial perception circuits are seemingly suited to representing much smaller areas. A team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, led by Prof. Nachum Ulanovsky of the Department of Neurobiology, tackled this riddle by thinking outside the experimental box. By combining an unusual research model – fruit bats – with an unusual setting – a 200-meter-long (about one-eighth of a mile) Bat-Tunnel – the team successfully revealed a novel neuronal code for spatial perception. The finding was reported in Science.
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