UCSF scientists have identified patterns of brain activity in the rat brain that play a role in the formation and recall of memories and decision-making. The discovery, which builds on the team’s previous findings, offers a path for studying learning, decision-making and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

A popular smoking cessation medication has been under a cloud of suspicion ever since the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a study in July 2011 reporting “risk of serious adverse cardiovascular events associated with varenicline.” UCSF researchers, however, question the way the previous study was conducted, and their new analysis, scheduled to be published May 4 in BMJ, reaches a very different conclusion.

UCSF's Allan Basbaum, PhD, a pioneer in the pain field, says one major lesson that has emerged in years of research is that not all types of pain are the same — nor should they be treated the same.

The smoking cessation drug varenicline significantly reduced alcohol consumption in a group of heavy-drinking smokers, in a study carried out by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

A pioneering approach to imaging breast cancer in mice has revealed new clues about why the human immune system often fails to attack tumors and keep cancer in check. This observation, by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), may help to reveal new approaches to cancer immunotherapy.

Warner Greene, MD, PhD, a UCSF professor of medicine who directs virology and immunology research at the Gladstone Institutes, has been inducted as president of the Association of American Physicians.