Dean Buja, Dr. Low and Dr. Burks have created the intellectual environment and support structure to make this all possible. Under the auspices of the W . M. Keck Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory , an exceptional scientist has been hired to investigate genes that are important for learning and memory. Post-doctoral fellows and graduate students are on board or being recruited. The department will soon receive a dual photon confocal microscope that will allow researchers to observe molecular movement inside cells.
Technological advances are one factor in the recent progress of neuroscience research.
PET and functional MRI scanners allow neuroscientists to see the brain in action, Byrne said. Combine this with advances in molecular science and the efforts of all the disciplines involved in neuroscience research and you have a confluence of powerful factors that is making the human brain less mysterious. Six years ago, UT-Houston established the Neuroscience Research Center to cultivate collaboration among more than 250 scientists and clinicians at university schools who work in neuroscience areas neurology, ophthalmology or psychiatry, to name a few. We are very proud of the way this has developed, Burks said. Jack has been the director since the beginning.