A new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, provides evidence that neurons in the middle frontal gyrus — a part of the brain’s frontal lobe — may play a role in planning body movements, but only when those movements are in response to auditory stimuli. The findings represent what could be a previously unknown function for this part of the brain and could provide a new target for researchers developing assistive devices for both movement and hearing disorders.

A research collaboration including three Brown University professors has been working toward a comprehensive understanding of traumatic brain injury — linking the damage occurring at the cellular level in the brain with the forces and motions involved in blows to the head. The collaboration, called PANTHER, Diane Hoffman-Kim is working to take single-cell research to the level of cell clusters. She works with mini-brains, 3D cultures of brain cells that mimic the basic functions of actual brains. Using mini-brains, the researchers are hoping to learn more about the chemical signals exchanged between cells in response to trauma.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted marketing authorization—under the De Novo premarket review pathway—for an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) implant, intended to serve as an alternative to ACL reconstruction to treat ACL tears. Professor Braden Fleming and his collaborators developed the Bridge-Enhanced ACL Repair (BEAR) Implant.

The subset of cancer cells that the group studied, called Polyploidal Giant Cancer Cells, is one that has often been ignored because of variation from most other cancer cells. But there are “a lot of really important qualities that make them important to study and understand on a level of developing new treatment strategies to target invasive cancer cells,” said Michelle Dawson.