Rotating neuronal waves are built into brain anatomy and help coordinate far-flung regions, mouse imaging study suggests
Category: neuroscience
Abstract: Address correspondence to: Adam D
Bachstetter, Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center, Department of Neuroscience, University of Kentucky, 741 S. Limestone Street, BBSRB Room B459, Lexington, Kentucky 40536–0509, USA. Phone: 859.218.4315; Email: adam.bachstetter@uky.edu.
How a brainless sea blob still ‘feels’ touch and crawls away in seconds without nerves or muscles
For a flat sea creature just a few millimeters across, a gentle poke is instantly recognized as danger. Trichoplax adhaerens—a translucent blob with no head, brain or muscles—scuttles away in seconds when touched. Imagine a flattened multicellular amoeba moving as a single unit: Trichoplax is only ~20 microns thick and a few millimeters wide. It glides on surfaces by beating tens of thousands of cilia on its lower epithelium (the underside), like microscopic oars dragging against the water.
Yet unlike most animals, Trichoplax has no obvious front or back end, no nerves or muscles at all. How can such a simple “crawling carpet” steer or change direction without a brain?
A new study reveals the remarkable flexibility of this pinhead-sized animal. While in most creatures, the orientation of each cilium is fixed early in development and locked to the body’s axes, Trichoplax achieves its swift escape by reorienting its thousands of hairlike cilia.
Targeting enzyme could block cancer spread to brain with fewer side effects
A new study has identified a more precise and effective way to prevent cancer from spreading to the brain. The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, details the development of novel drug candidates that target a key enzyme implicated in the spread of lung, breast, skin and other cancers to the brain. The work builds on a promising new therapeutic strategy first reported by the same group of researchers last year.
The new drug candidates are designed to intercept rogue cancer cells before they depart from primary tumors and ultimately travel to the brain.
Lead author Sheila Singh, based at both King’s College London and McMaster University, says this type of cancer—called metastatic brain cancer—is the most common type of brain tumor in adults and comes with an extremely grim outlook, with 90% of patients dying within one year of diagnosis.
These tiny genetic fragments may be critical for telling a brain when to rest
The altered presence of tiny fragments of neuronal genes, called microexons, causes hyperarousal in zebrafish. This is the main conclusion of an international study led by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG). An abnormal pattern of neural microexon presence leads to a hyperarousal state characterized by heightened neural activity and insomnia, commonly associated with stress but also with neurodevelopmental disorders.
Arousal regulation is highly conserved in evolution. Therefore, this finding could help researchers understand the mechanism underlying some human neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, conditions associated with microexon mutations.
To survive, animals need to be ready to react to external and internal stimuli. This activation of the central nervous system, arousal, is highly conserved throughout the animal kingdom.
UNM Researchers Find Alarmingly High Levels of Microplastics in Human Brains — and Concentrations are Growing Over Time
Microplastics – tiny bits of degraded polymers that are ubiquitous in our air, water and soil – have lodged themselves throughout the human body, including the liver, kidney, placenta and testes, over the past half century.
Now, University of New Mexico Health Sciences researchers have found microplastics in human brains, and at much higher concentrations than in other organs. Worse, the plastic accumulation appears to be growing over time, having increased by 50% over just the past eight years.
In a new study published in Nature Medicine, a team led by toxicologist Matthew Campen, PhD, Distinguished and Regents’ Professor in the UNM College of Pharmacy, reported that plastic concentrations in the brain appeared higher than in the liver or kidney, and higher than previous reports for placentas and testes.
Neuron-targeted gene therapy rescues multiple phenotypes of STXBP1-related disorders in mice and is well tolerated in nonhuman primates
Aeran and colleagues present research on targeted gene therapy vector engineering and pre-clinical testing of neuron-targeted AAV9-based constructs for STXBP1-related neurodevelopmental and epileptic encephalopathies. Candidate vectors designed to target specific neuronal types and detarget tissues associated with toxicity produced robust phenotypic reversal in Stxbp1 +/− mice and were well tolerated in monkeys.
Analogy as the Core of Cognition
In this Presidential Lecture, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter examines the role and contributions of analogy in cognition, using a variety of analogies to illustrate his points.
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