Neuroscience Awards Three students in the Graduate School program in neuroscience are top winners for their presentations at the Baltimore Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience. The first place presentation examined differences between nerves. Eric Lancaster won first prize, Sarah Preston won second prize, and Obinna Ndubuizu won honorable mention at the organization's annual meeting held in November at Johns Hopkins University.
Sensory nerves are long and are found in various parts of the body.
They extend to the brain, spinal cord, or brainstem. These cells send impulses to the brainstem to inform the brain about such things like blood pressure and when the stomach is full. What we found was that when these neurons are injured they send less impulses to the brain. My goal was to find out what makes one group of nerves different from another group even though they are all attached in some way to the brain. If we understand the differences we can control the pain.