Medicine & Health

Scientists have created a virtual model of the brain that daydreams like humans do. They hope the model will help them understand why certain portions of the brain work together when a person daydreams or is mentally idle. Shown is the study’s senior author, Maurizio Corbetta, MD.

Researchers at the School of Medicine want to know whether they can reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies at community clinics by providing  contraceptive counseling that emphasizes the benefits of long-acting birth control, like IUDs and implants, and by making these methods available to women at sharply reduced costs or free of charge. Pictured is Tessa Madden, MD, the study’s principal investigator.

Thanks to a grant from the St. Louis-based Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation, 21 physician scientist trainees in two clinical departments at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will receive research support. Pictured is Oliver Langenberg, who led the foundation for more than 50 years before his death last year and after whom the physician scientist training programs in the departments of Medicine and Pediatrics have been renamed.

Ronald Evens, MD, professor of radiology at the School of Medicine and of medical economics at the Olin Business School, has been appointed chairman of the Board of Regents for the National Library of Medicine.

Marco Colonna, MD, has been named the Robert Rock Belliveau, MD, Professor of Pathology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Shown (from left) are Colonna; Belliveau’s wife, Rita Deanin Abbey; and Belliveau.

Three School of Medicine employees have been honored with the dean’s annual distinguished service, research support staff and operations staff awards. Shown is the dean, Larry J. Shapiro, MD, with Kristin Palmquist, winner of the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award.

New research provides one of the most detailed and comprehensive analyses yet of the genetic diversity of endangered great apes living in the wild, revealing new clues to the evolution of apes and humans.

William G. Powderly, MD, the J. William Campbell Professor of Medicine and co-director, Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named director of the Institute for Public Health (IPH), according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. Powderly succeeds founding director Edward J. Lawlor, PhD, dean of the Brown School and the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor; Graham Colditz, MD, DPhil, the Niess-Gain Professor of Surgery and professor of medicine in the School of Medicine, will continue to serve as deputy director. The appointment is effective July 1.

A fast-paced “Ignite” event focused on disparities in health care will be held July 11 on the Washington University Medical Campus.

A key brain structure that regulates emotions works differently in preschoolers with depression compared with their healthy peers, according to new research at the School of Medicine. Brain scans of preschoolers with depression revealed elevated activity in the amygdala, the area shown in the red circle, when compared with scans of young children exhibiting no signs of depression.