From Our Neurons to Yours

Traditionally, we think of Parkinson's as a movement disorder—defined by slowed movement, stiff muscles, and involuntary shaking. But it turns out there are other symptoms that appear years or even decades before movement problems bring patients to the clinic: sleep disturbances, chronic constipation, and loss of smell.
For today's guest, these early symptoms represent an incredible opportunity to understand where Parkinson's begins and to identify patients much earlier in the disease.
Kathleen Poston is a neurologist and division chief for movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. She's also a member of the steering committee for the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Wu Tsai Neuro, and advises the Michael J. Fox Foundation and pharmaceutical companies on Parkinson's research.
We discuss why non-motor symptoms might hold the key to early diagnosis, how new biomarkers are redefining the disease, and whether Parkinson's might actually start in the gut.
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Learn about Poston's research on her lab site
Learn about the Stanford Lewy Body Dementia Research Center of Excellence
Redefining Parkinson's Disease | Our previous conversation with Poston, in which we learned about a sea change in our understanding of Parkinson's Disease.
Neuroscientists dive into the gut (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025) | Our 2025 Symposium explored how our brains and bodies communicate—and what that means for our health and well-being
Parkinson’s comes in many forms. New biomarkers may explain why (Knight Initiative, 2025) | Blood and cerebrospinal fluid markers tied to inflammation and metabolism sort some patients into subgroups, a step toward predicting progression and tailoring care.
A biological definition of neuronal α-synuclein disease: towards an integrated staging system for research (The Lancet - Neurology, 2024)
International Working Group Proposes New Framework for Defining Parkinson Disease Based on Biology, Not Symptoms (Neurology Live article)
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Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What if we could make the brain see-through? 
It sounds like science fiction, but it could revolutionize how we study the brain. 
Today on the show, we're talking with Guosong Hong, a faculty scholar here at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute who has a unique reputation for developing creative techniques that literally shed light on the brain—from using fluorescent nanomaterials and focused ultrasound to create a virtual flashlight inside the skull, to discovering a common food dye that temporarily makes skin, muscle, and even parts of the brain transparent. 
Now, Guosong and colleagues are taking this work to the next level through a Wu Tsai Neuro Big Ideas grant, genetically engineering mice to have see-through brains from birth. 
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Q&A: 'To see is to believe'  (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026)
Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026)
Researchers turn mouse scalp transparent to image brain development (Stanford Report, 2026)
The future of transparent tissue (Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything Podcast, 2025)
Non-invasive brain stimulation opens new ways to study and treat the brain (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025)
Researchers make mouse skin transparent using a common food dye (Stanford Report, 2024)
Note: Episode transcript will be uploaded within 24-48 hours of publication
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Our memories and senses are deeply connected—like how a favorite song can recreate a whole glorious teenage summer. It turns out this relationship might extend beyond our five external senses to include our internal senses: the signals telling us what's happening inside our bodies, sometimes beyond the veil of conscious perception.
New research by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute affiliate Christoph Thaiss suggests that losing these internal signals as we age — in part due to changes in our gut microbiome — could one reason why our memories decline as we get older. 
Today we're talking with Thaiss about his new study in Nature that traces a surprising path from gut microbes to memory formation in the mouse brain.
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Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline, improved memory formation in aging mice (Stanford Medicine, 2026)
Intestinal interoceptive dysfunction drives age-associated cognitive decline. (Nature, 2026)
Christoph's presentation at Wu Tsai Neuro's 2025 Annual Symposium
Neuroscientists Dive into the Gut (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025)
The Thaiss Lab at the Arc Institute
Thaiss Lab publications
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Today on the show, why do some of us age faster than others? Why do some of us grow old and die before our time while others seem to simply endure? And most of us have probably wondered at one point or another, which track am I on? 
Turns out it might be possible to predict the whole trajectory of an animal's life at a surprisingly young age, just by looking closely at subtle patterns of behavior. That's the conclusion of a new study from researchers at the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience here at Wu Tsai Neuro, out March 12, 2026 in the journal Science. 
The study focused on the African turquoise killifish, a little fish that lives fast and dies young. This species has one of the shortest lifespans of any vertebrate, which makes it ideal for studying the entire arc of a life in the laboratory setting.

The important point here is that even short-lived killifish are dealt different lots by the fates. Even when you control for genetics and the environment, some killifish only live a month or two, while others can live as long as a year. So the big question is, what drives this difference in longevity? 
To learn more, we're joined today by the study's two lead researchers, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Postdoctoral Scholars, Claire Bedbrook and Ravi Nath, who performed the research in the labs of Anne Brunet and Karl Deisseroth here at Stanford.
Learn More
To study aging, researchers give killifish the CRISPR treatment (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2023)
Study pinpoints key mechanism of brain aging (Stanford Report, 2025)
Killifish project explores the genetic foundation of longevity (Stanford Medicine 2015)
Multi-tissue transcriptomic aging atlas reveals pred
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

We know shockingly little about what goes on in a mother’s brain during pregnancy.
For example, we know only a handful of the hormones involved—out of hundreds scientists think may exist—and very little about how they might impact the brain. This gap in our understanding is one of the reasons we don’t have great treatments for pregnancy-related maladies, whether it’s extreme nausea, or anxiety and depression.
Closing this gap is the mission of the new Stanford Neuro-Pregnancy Initiative, part of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute's Big Ideas in Neuroscience Program. 
Today on the show, we speak with initiative leaders Nirao Shah, a neuroscientist who studies sex differences in animal behavior, and Katrin Svensson is an expert in how our tissues use hormones to communicate in health and disease. Together with Longzhi Tan, an expert in gene regulation and 3d genome structure, the team aims to chart the cellular and molecular transformation that occurs in a mother's brain during pregnancy, in hopes of better understanding this fundamental event in a person's life and improving health outcomes for both mothers and infants. 
Learn more:
Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026)
Nirao Shah lab
Katrin Svensson lab
Longzhi Tan lab
References:
Hoekzema, E., et al. (2017) Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nat Neurosci 20, 287–296. This is the landmark neuroimaging study discussed in the episode that provided evidence of long-lasting, pregnancy-induced changes in the structure of the human brain. 
Fejzo, M., et al. (2024) GDF15 linked to maternal risk of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Nature 625, 760–767. This recent paper provides strong evidence that the hormone GDF15 acts on the brainstem to cause nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.
Knoedler J, et al. A functional cellular framework for sex and estrous cycle-dependent gene expression and behavior. Cell. 185, e1–e18 (2022). This is the work from Dr. Shah’s lab mentioned in the episode, identifying a specific circuit in the hypothalamus that changes its connectivity across the estrous cycle
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.