It’s a touchy subject — literally. Samuel Andrew Hires, assistant professor of biological sciences, wants to know how the brain learns to understand what we’re touching. Understanding how this works could one day be a boon for people who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury.
It’s a touchy subject — literally. Samuel Andrew Hires, assistant professor of biological sciences, wants to know how the brain learns to understand what we’re touching. Understanding how this works could one day be a boon for people who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury.
Hires recently received a five-year, $2.5 million New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health to advance the research. The award is the first of its kind obtained by a researcher at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and only the third overall for USC.
Glowing brain cells
Using technology, he began developing as a postdoctoral associate at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Va., Hires aims to map the neural circuits in the brain that interpret touch sensation and learn from it.
“All of our actions require a constant communication between our body and our brain to coordinate them, and the messages are encoded by electrical signals,” he said. “Signals coming from your body are translated and interpreted in the brain.”
Read more at University of Southern California
Image: Fluorescence and optical technology are used to understand how the brain interprets and learns from touch signals. (Image/Courtesy of Samuel Andrew Hires)
