astronomy

Raz Yirmiya

Raz Yirmiya is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Raz Yirmiya rather than just read about it. In short: Raz Yirmiya (Hebrew: רז ירמיה; born 1956) is an Israeli behavioral neuroscientist and director of the Laboratory for Psychoneuroimmunology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He is best known for providing the first experimental evidence for the role of immune system activation in depression, for discovering that disturbances in brain microglia cells underlie some forms of depression, and for elucidatin…

Key takeaways

Raz Yirmiya belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Raz Yirmiya to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Raz Yirmiya from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Raz Yirmiya (Hebrew: רז ירמיה; born 1956) is an Israeli behavioral neuroscientist and director of the Laboratory for Psychoneuroimmunology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He is best known for providing the first experimental evidence for the role of immune system activation in depression,

for discovering that disturbances in brain microglia cells underlie some forms of depression,

and for elucidating the involvement of inflammatory cytokines in regulation of cognitive and emotional processes.

Biography and academic education Raz Yirmiya was born in Rehovot, Israel, and grew up in the northern Israeli beach town Nahariya. Following high-school graduation he joined the Israel Defense Forces, and served as an officer in the Education Corps. Raz Yirmiya obtained a bachelor's degree in Psychobiology from Haifa University and M.Sc. in Physiology from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He did his Ph.D. in Neuroscience under the supervision of Prof. John C. Liebeskind at the University of California, Los Angeles, US. After a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA he returned in 1990 to an academic position in the Department of Psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in which he was appointed to a full Professor in 2003. Raz Yirmiya is married to Professor Nurit Yirmiya and they have 4 children.

Scientific career In his initial studies during the early 1990s Yirmiya demonstrated that psychoactive drugs, particularly alcohol and opiates, modulate immune functioning and resistance to cancer via brain-to-immune communication pathways.

After establishing his laboratory in Jerusalem, Yirmiya focused on the implications of immune-to-brain signaling and using animal models of various infectious, autoimmune and neurological diseases he established the relationships between brain inflammatory cytokines and sickness behavior symptoms. He is specifically known for providing the first experimental evidence for a relationship between immune activation and major depression.

His contribution was described in a historical review by Robert Dantzer and Keith Kelly,

Who stated: "Raz Yirmiya was the first psychobiologist to draw the analogy between sickness behavior and depression. He showed that rats treated with cytokines are less sensitive to the rewarding properties of a saccharin solution or to the presentation of a sexually-active partner. Some of these deficits can be prevented by chronic but not acute administration of antidepressant drugs that have little or no beneficial effects on sickness behavior." In parallel studies, Yirmiya employed unique controlled and prospective experimental models of disease in humans, demonstrating that immune challenges, such as endotoxin administration, rubella vaccination or minor surgery, induce cytokine-mediated disturbances in behavioral, emotional and cognitive functions.

Together, these studies directly contributed to the formation of novel conceptualizations and the development of clinically effective treatments for inflammation-associated major depression. In recent years, Yirmiya discovered that microglia cells and pro-inflammatory cytokines in the brain play a critical role in normal neuro-behavioral processes, including hippocampal-dependent memory consolidation, neural plasticity, neurogenesis, and the modulation of these processes by environmental enrichment.

On the other hand, disturbances in the structure and functioning of microglia cells and pathophysiological levels of the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1 in the brain underlie the impairments in cognition and neurogenesis associated with stress.

and neurodegenerative diseases,

as well as the development of depression.

Yirmiya also discovered (together with Itai Bab from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), the existence of brain-to-bone communication pathways, mediated by the sympathetic and Parasympathetic nervous system, and reported that chronic stress-induced depression produces bone loss via modulation of these pathways, forming the foundations of a new field of research that we termed "NeuroPsychoOsteology".

Raz Yirmiya is a past-president of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society (PNIRS)

He was an Associate Editor of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (Elsevier Press)

and a recipient of the Norman Cousins Award for outstanding contributions to research in psychoneuroimmunology.

References

External links https://scholars.huji.ac.il/razyirmiya Raz Yirmiya in Psychology Faculty at the Hebrew University Raz Yirmiya in Google Scholar Raz Yirmiya in Yissum site Judy Siegel-Itzikovich, Hebrew University researchers find mechanism underlying depression, in Jerusalem Post, January 8, 2014 Anti-inflammatory Function Of Alzheimer's Disease Drugs Revealed, in Science Daily, August 1, 2005 Judy Siegel-Itzikovich, HU discovery could improve osteoporosis drugs, in Jerusalem Post, September 9, 2012 Connection between depression and osteoporosis detailed, in Science Daily, November 30, 2009

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Raz Yirmiya

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Raz Yirmiya claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Raz Yirmiya before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Raz Yirmiya ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Raz Yirmiya

In research: Raz Yirmiya appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Raz Yirmiya in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Raz Yirmiya is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1956 births, Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israeli neuroscientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Raz Yirmiya outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Raz Yirmiya in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Raz Yirmiya means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Raz Yirmiya out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Raz Yirmiya in simple terms?

Why does Raz Yirmiya matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Raz Yirmiya?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Raz Yirmiya.