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Category: neuroscience – Page 691

Researchers discover new type of nerve cell in the retina

Scientists at the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah have discovered a new type of nerve cell, or neuron, in the retina.

In the central nervous system, a complex circuitry of neurons communicate with each other to relay sensory and motor information; so-called interneurons serve as intermediaries in the chain of communication. Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, a research team led by Ning Tian, Ph.D., identifies a previously unknown type of interneuron in the mammalian .

The discovery marks a notable development for the field as scientists work toward a better understanding of the central nervous system by identifying all classes of neurons and their connections.

Has a treatment for Alzheimer’s been sitting on pharmacy shelves for decades? Scientists have two possible candidates

Two drugs approved decades ago not only counteract brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease in animal models, the same therapeutic combination may also improve cognition.

Sounds like a slam dunk in terms of a cure—but not yet. Researchers currently are concentrating on animal studies amid implications that remain explosive: If a surprising drug combination continues to destroy a key feature of the disease, then an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s may have been hiding for decades in plain sight.

A promising series of early studies is highlighting two well known medicine cabinet standbys—gemfibrosil, an old-school cholesterol-lowering drug, and retinoic acid, a vitamin A derivative. Gemfibrosil, is sold as Lopid and while it’s still used, it is not widely prescribed. Doctors now prefer to prescribe statins to lower cholesterol. Retinoic acid has been used in various formulations to treat everything from acne to psoriasis to cancer.

Neuroscience’s Existential Crisis

On a chilly evening last fall, I stared into nothingness out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office on the outskirts of Harvard’s campus. As a purplish-red sun set, I sat brooding over my dataset on rat brains. I thought of the cold windowless rooms in downtown Boston, home to Harvard’s high-performance computing center, where computer servers were holding on to a precious 48 terabytes of my data. I have recorded the 13 trillion numbers in this dataset as part of my Ph.D. experiments, asking how the visual parts of the rat brain respond to movement.

Printed on paper, the dataset would fill 116 billion pages, double-spaced. When I recently finished writing the story of my data, the magnum opus fit on fewer than two dozen printed pages. Performing the experiments turned out to be the easy part. I had spent the last year agonizing over the data, observing and asking questions. The answers left out large chunks that did not pertain to the questions, like a map leaves out irrelevant details of a territory.

But, as massive as my dataset sounds, it represents just a tiny chunk of a dataset taken from the whole brain. And the questions it asks—Do neurons in the visual cortex do anything when an animal can’t see? What happens when inputs to the visual cortex from other brain regions are shut off?—are small compared to the ultimate question in neuroscience: How does the brain work?

Key to resilient energy-efficient AI may reside in human brain

A clearer understanding of how a type of brain cell known as astrocytes function and can be emulated in the physics of hardware devices, may result in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that autonomously self-repairs and consumes much less energy than the technologies currently do, according to a team of Penn State researchers.

Astrocytes are named for their star shape and are a type of glial cell, which are support cells for neurons in the . They play a crucial role in brain functions such as memory, learning, self-repair and synchronization.

“This project stemmed from recent observations in , as there has been a lot of effort and understanding of how the brain works and people are trying to revise the model of simplistic neuron-synapse connections,” said Abhronil Sengupta, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “It turns out there is a third component in the brain, the astrocytes, which constitutes a significant section of the cells in the brain, but its role in machine learning and neuroscience has kind of been overlooked.”

Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study

A new type of magnetic brain stimulation brought rapid remission to almost 80% of participants with severe depression in a study conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The , known as Stanford accelerated intelligent neuromodulation therapy (SAINT) or simply Stanford neuromodulation therapy, is an intensive, individualized form of transcranial magnetic stimulation. In the study, remission typically occurred within days and lasted months. The only side effects were temporary fatigue and headaches.

“It works well, it works quickly and it’s noninvasive,” said Nolan Williams, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “It could be a game changer.” Williams is the senior author of the study, which was published Oct. 29 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Scientists Identify the Cause of Alzheimer’s Progression in the Brain — Very Different Than Previously Thought

For the first time, researchers have used human data to quantify the speed of different processes that lead to Alzheimer’s disease and found that it develops in a very different way than previously thought. Their results could have important implications for the development of potential treatments.

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, found that instead of starting from a single point in the brain and initiating a chain reaction that leads to the death of brain cells, Alzheimer’s disease reaches different regions of the brain early. How quickly the disease kills cells in these regions, through the production of toxic protein clusters, limits how quickly the disease progresses overall.

The researchers used post-mortem brain samples from Alzheimer’s patients, as well as PET scans from living patients, who ranged from those with mild cognitive impairment to those with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, to track the aggregation of tau, one of two key proteins implicated in the condition.

Precision Medicine Data Dive Shows “Water Pill” Could Potentially Be Repurposed To Treat Alzheimer’s

A commonly available oral diuretic pill approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may be a potential candidate for an Alzheimer’s disease treatment for those who are at genetic risk, according to findings published in Nature Aging. The research included analysis showing that those who took bumetanide — a commonly used and potent diuretic — had a significantly lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease compared to those not taking the drug. The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, advances a precision medicine approach for individuals at greater risk of the disease because of their genetic makeup.

The research team analyzed information in databases of brain tissue samples and FDA-approved drugs, performed mouse and human cell experiments, and explored human population studies to identify bumetanide as a leading drug candidate that may potentially be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s.

“Though further tests and clinical trials are needed, this research underscores the value of big data-driven tactics combined with more traditional scientific approaches to identify existing FDA-approved drugs as candidates for drug repurposing to treat Alzheimer’s disease,” said NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D.

Simple, Brainless Organisms Store Memories Externally

Barely-alive creatures, such as the slime mold pictured, are able to produce “memories” — they just store them in their physical surroundings rather than a brain. “A slime mould is not a fungus or mould, but is in fact a protist, which is really the odds and ends of the natural world that don’t fit in with the rest of our taxonomic grouping system,” said PhD student Christopher Reid who led the study.

Is it possible to know where you’ve been when you don’t have a brain? Depending on your definition of “know,” the answer may be yes. Researchers have shown that the slime mold, an organism without anything that resembles a nervous system (or, for that matter, individual cells), is capable of impressive feats of navigation. It can even link food sources in optimally spaced networks. Now, researchers have shown it’s capable of filling its environment with indications of where it has already searched for food, allowing it to “remember” its past efforts and focus its attention on routes it hasn’t explored.

MRI and Ultrasound Can Sneak Cancer Drugs into the Brain

𝙈𝙍𝙄 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙐𝙡𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙨𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝘾𝙖𝙣 𝙎𝙣𝙚𝙖𝙠 𝘾𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙧 𝘿𝙧𝙪𝙜𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘽𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙙𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙡𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙙 𝙖 𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙣𝙞𝙦𝙪𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙗𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙙-𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙗𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙧

𝐈𝐧 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲, 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 t𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝-𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐬𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧.

A new way to usher treatments through the protective blood-brain barrier.