A UCLA professor was elected to the National Academy of Medicine on Monday. Linda Liau, the chair of neurosurgery in the David Geffen School of Medicine, was elected to the academy for her achievements in studying the immunology of brain tumors and designing clinical trials of vaccines for glioblastomas, according to the National Academy of Medicine website. Read more...

Photo: Linda Liau is the second woman in America and the first Asian-American woman to lead an academic department of neurosurgery, and is part of the six percent of licensed neurosurgeons in the United States who are female. (Photo illustration courtesy of UCLA Health)

UCLA researchers successfully tested a potential treatment for visual deficiencies associated with autism by manipulating malfunctioning neurons in mice. The team of researchers studied the mechanisms behind fragile X syndrome, one of the most common genetic causes of autism and identified the deficit neurons that impaired the mice’s ability to process visual information. Read more...

Photo: The researchers studied the mechanisms behind fragile X syndrome, one of the most common genetic causes of autism. They identified and treated a neuron deficit, enabling mice with fragile X syndrome to learn a visual task as quickly as healthy mice. (Amy Dixon/Photo editor)