A parasite carried by billions isn’t dormant at all—it’s running a secret survival operation inside the brain.
A common parasite long thought to lie dormant is actually much more active and complex. Researchers found that Toxoplasma gondii cysts contain multiple parasite subtypes, not just one sleeping form. Some are primed to reactivate and cause disease, which helps explain why infections are so hard to treat. The discovery could reshape efforts to develop drugs that finally eliminate the parasite for good.
Beautifully executed paper on putting mechanoluminescent nanoparticles into blood circulation of mice which express optogenetic channels. Focused ultrasound can then trigger targeted light emission and control of neural activity in the brain and elsewhere.
A deep-tissue light source made from mechanoluminescent transducers stimulated by focused ultrasound enables wide imaging of live animal vasculature, and modulation of neuronal activity and behaviour.
Researchers at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon have for the first time managed to identify with an imaging technique whether nervous impulses in the brain of rats are flowing in a “bottom-up” (feedforward), carrying information about visual input, or a “top-down” (feedback) direction, carrying information about expectations or predictions on a given task or about the perception of the world around us. Their results, published in Nature Communications, could have important implications for understanding changes in the brains of people with hallucinations, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, and other conditions.
Joana Carvalho, first author of the new study, who at the time was working in the Preclinical MRI lab led by senior author Noam Shemesh (she has since become a group leader at Coimbra University), “came up with the ideas, did the experiments and analyzed the results. I just brought the MRI expertise,” says Shemesh good-humoredly. Co-author Koen V. Haak from Tilburg University (Netherlands) gave assistance with the computational models and the others helped with the experiments.
The team showed that spontaneous feedforward and feedback nervous impulses in these rodents (the brain never sleeps) each have a unique, distinct signature, which can be detected by using a method they developed, called uFLARE (UltraFast Layer-Resolved Encoding), a neuroimaging technique designed to map brain activity with unprecedented high temporal and spatial resolutions.
Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered something that experienced ballroom dancers have long known: When dancers are in tune with each other, their brains may sync up, helping them move as one.
“When we dance, our brains are actually coupling,” said Thiago Roque, a graduate student in the Atlas Institute who led the study. “We are synchronizing our brains through our behavior.”
For the unique experiment, the researchers placed electroencephalogram (EEG) caps, or devices that measure electrical activity in the brain, on pairs doing the Argentine Tango—a sensuous dance where a leader and follower hold each other tight while moving together to music.
Ever heard of getting a “dopamine hit” from something you enjoy? These exciting moments also appear to influence memory, although perhaps not in the way you’d expect.
New research by UCLA psychologists suggests your brain may use dopamine to distort and expand time between distinct events, separating the flow of experience into pieces that can be flexibly reconstructed in the future.
The study, published in Nature Communications, found that a key dopamine-producing area of the brain—the ventral tegmental area—was activated when volunteers participating in an MRI scan detected the start of a new event. Importantly, when this dopamine hub was strongly activated, people reported more time had passed. The researchers also found that when people blinked more during a new event—an action thought to be related to dopamine signaling—their memory for time once again expanded.
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My name is Artem, I’m a neuroscience PhD student at Harvard University.
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