in order to avoid permanent damage to the brain and other organs. This requires accurate monitoring of oxygenation during the first days of life.
which send the information to the brain. In a test, two weeks after surgery, Mr Flynn was able to detect the pattern of horizontal,
#Missing link found between brain, immune system--with major disease implications Vessels directly connecting brain, lymphatic system exist despite decades of doctrine that they don't.
'In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of medicine have determined that the brain is connected directly to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist.
"Instead of asking,'How do we study the immune response of the brain?''''Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?'
Because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels,
"said Jonathan Kipnis, Phd, professor in the UVA Department of Neuroscience and director of UVA's Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG)."
"It changes entirely the way we perceive the neuro-immune interaction. We always perceived it before as something esoteric that can't be studied.
"New Discovery in Human body Kevin Lee, Phd, chairman of the UVA Department of Neuroscience, described his reaction to the discovery by Kipnis'lab:"
'There has never been a lymphatic system for the central nervous system, and it was very clear from that first singular observation
since then to bolster the finding-that it will fundamentally change the way people look at the central nervous system's relationship with the immune system."
a postdoctoral fellow in Kipnis'lab. The vessels were detected after Louveau developed a method to mount a mouse's meninges-the membranes covering the brain-on a single slide
We fixed the meninges within the skullcap, so that the tissue is secured in its physiological condition,
'"As to how the brain's lymphatic vessels managed to escape notice all this time, Kipnis described them as"very well hidden
Harris, a Phd, is an assistant professor of neuroscience and a member of the BIG center.
Alzheimer's, Autism, MS and Beyond The unexpected presence of the lymphatic vessels raises a tremendous number of questions that now need answers, both about the workings of the brain and the diseases that plague it.
"In Alzheimer's, there are accumulations of big protein chunks in the brain, "Kipnis said.""We think they may be accumulating in the brain
because they're not being removed efficiently by these vessels.""He noted that the vessels look different with age,
#A microtubule'roadway'in the retina helps provide energy for vision Fluorescently labeled microtubules extend from the tips of the dendrites (top) into the axon and down into the giant synaptic terminal (bottom) of a single isolated goldfish retinal
Researchers have discovered a thick band of microtubules in certain neurons in the retina that they believe acts as a transport road for mitochondria that help provide energy required for visual processing.
The retina is a layer of tissue in the back of the eye that converts light into nerve impulses.
specialized neurons called bipolar cells that transmit information from light-sensitive photoreceptor cells to ganglion neurons,
which send information to the brain for interpretation as images. Bipolar cells are continuously active, a characteristic few other neurons share.
They require a constant supply of energy to mediate the sustained release of the contents of an enormous number of synaptic vesicles,
which store the transmitters that convey information between neurons. An intriguing new study of their subcellular structure could help explain how bipolar synaptic terminals meet such excessive energy demands.
Using cutting-edge 3d microscopy, researchers from the National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute and Yale university examined the subcellular architecture of presynaptic terminals in retinal bipolar cells of live goldfish.
that extended from the axon of the neuron into the synaptic terminal and then looped around the interior periphery of the terminal.
the mitochondria accumulated in the axon of the neuron and never made it to the synaptic terminal.
The findings suggest that these previously unknown microtubule structures provide a"roadway"for the transport of mitochondria crucial to maintain energy supplies into the synaptic terminals of these highly active neurons associated with vision.
#Nerve cells created from blood cells Researchers have found a way to directly convert blood stem cells into nerve cells of both the central and peripheral nervous system.
and make the main cell types of neurological systems-the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system-in a dish that is specialised for each patient.'
Alongside it, the researchers had to use particular chemical conditions to goad the cells into becoming neural stem cells,
which began to express Nestin-a marker of neural stem cells. Whether derived from cord cells or adult blood,
The team then demonstrated that the cells could be manipulated to give rise to multiple neural cell types including glial cells, dopaminergic cells of the central nervous system and nociceptive (pain) neurons of the peripheral nervous system.
The researchers say that the technique could be used to develop drugs that specifically target the peripheral nervous system
while sparing the central nervous system, which could reduce the side effects of pain medication. Other applications could be in better understanding neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases,
they confirmed that the PRDM12 gene is switched normally on during the development of pain-sensing nerve cells.
#Study paves way for genetics-first approach to brain cancer treatment Two US studies have identified specific genetic mutations in gliomas
which develop from the glial cells of the brain and spine, and make up 80 percent of malignant brain tumours.
Patients who develop gliomas are treated usually with a combination of radiotherapy, surgery and chemotherapy; however it is currently difficult to work out how useful these treatments will be.
#Miniature brain'organoids'offer model for autism Scientists have grown miniature brains out of stem cells from people with autism,
and have found that they overproduce one type of neuron. These tiny brain'organoids'three-dimensional clusters of cells, just a few millimetres across mimic the brains of early fetuses
and allow scientists to study early neurological development in a way that was not possible before. Previous studies have looked at the genomes of those with autism to identify the genes that might be responsible,
This is the first study to use brain organoids to investigate the disorder which is characterised by social and communication difficulties.'
and then encouraged them to grow into clusters of brain neurons. These clusters are similar the brain of a fetus during the second trimester
called the telencephalon.''I immediately realised that this could be used to reenact stages of neurodevelopment that were almost impossible to study in humans,
'Professor Vaccarino told The Scientist. Despite the fact that autism is a complex collection of disorders, the researchers found several clear differences between the brain organoids from the autistic boys and those from their fathers.
In particular, there were more inhibitory neurons (which quieten down brain activity) compared to excitatory neurons (which amplify brain activity).
Tracing this back to the increased expression of a gene involved in early brain development Foxg1 the researchers were then able to restore a normal balance of inhibitory and excitatory neurons by suppressing the expression of this gene in the autistic brain organoids.
Neuroscientist Dr Alysson Muotri of the University of California, San diego, who was involved not in the study,
told The Scientist the results were impressive and surprising.''If someone had asked me, I would have said,
"You won't find anything in common, it's probably going to be mixed a bag.""But no...there seems to be key things that are dysregulated in all of them.'
'Professor Vaccarino is hopeful that this approach to studying autism, as well as other brain disorders, can offer new insights.'
'This study speaks to the importance of using human cells to bring a better understanding of the pathophysiology of autism and, with that, possibly better treatments. e
Scientists see the technology being used in remote laboratory settings to diagnose cancers and central nervous system disorders such as Alzheimer
From sugars to viral invaders to nerve impulses all cellular traffic passes through the cell membrane, and likely interacts with the proteins embedded there, such as neurotransmitter and hormone receptors.
To understand all that transpires at the membrane, biologists need to zoom in to the atomic level.
and reintegrating them into a recipient nervous system is one of the next challenges that needs to be faced,
#Workings of Working memory Revealed Our understanding of how a key part of the human brain works may be wrong.
That the conclusion of a team at Oxford university Centre for Human brain Activity (OHBA), published in journal Trends in cognitive sciences.
and respond to immediate demands was underpinned by stable brain patterns. The OHBA team discovered that instead,
the areas of the brain responsible for working memory are changing all the time. Dr. Mark Stokes, who led the research,
while brain activity is constantly changing?''Previously it was believed that in order to carry out a task, there would be constant brain activity related to the goal of that task.
In a review of fifty years of studies using monkeys, the OHBA team found that
when there was no brain activity related to the goal. Yet, as soon as it was necessary, these ctivity-silentperiods ended
and the brain activity could be observed again. Dr. Stokes said:''Say you are looking for your coffee cup.
your brain also has to process that task. If you can stop the'coffee cup'activity
while the brain works on navigating round the house, then start it again when you see the cup, that more efficient.'
The brain uses around 20 percent of the energy youe burning each day, but it difficult to get that energy into the brain.
Every bit of brain activity is using some of that, so if you can temporarily suspend some activity in your working memory the energy can be applied to an immediately relevant task.'
'This may mean that working memory is closer to long-term memory in the way it functions. You may be able to remember your tenth birthday,
but there is no constant pattern of brain activity that is your tenth birthday memory.''What we don know is how the brain is retaining that information in a stable way in the activity-silent periods.
There must be an underlying mechanism, but it is difficult to detect that mechanism because the equipment we use at the moment measures brain activity it can see what isn active.'
'The challenge for the future is developing new ways to measure the underlying activity-silent states that could be important for working memory.'
'The team's work has been made possible not only by improvements in the technology for recording brain activity but also the OHBA's approach to the huge amounts of data from dozens of studies,
and more effectively in order to improve our understanding of how the brain works. Dr. Stokes explained:'
Thinking about brain activity as a network of activity patterns, rather than behaviour of single neurons.
'The team looked at studies of the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that is crucial for working memory.
Damage to this area of the brain can affect memory and our ability to perform tasks.
#Researchers Discover Missing Link Between Brain and Immune system Scientists have discovered a previously unknown connection between the brain
and immune system that could result in drastic breakthroughs in treatment for diseases, such as Alzheimer. Researchers at the University of Virginia have discovered that blood vessels directly connect the brain to the body immune system.
These blood vessels were thought never to have existed, despite the extensive research done on the lymphatic system. The findings were published online in Nature. his discovery is important
because the brain is an immune privilege organ, study author Antoine Louveau, Ph d.,a postdoctoral fellow at the University Of Virginia School of medicine, told Bioscience Technology. ecently,
we have seen that the areas that are surrounding the brain are full of immune cells, even in normal conditions,
and that those immune cells are important in maintaining brain function. The discovery of those vessels mean that we are starting to understand how those areas work together
Louveau discovered the vessels after analyzing the meninges of a mouse. According to reports, the vessels were hidden very well
which are very difficult to capture images of. ny neuroscience textbook that has ever been written will say that the central nervous system is devoid of a lymphatic system
and that is one of the reasons the brain is privileged immune, Louveau said. hen we started our project,
if there are so many immune cells surrounding the brain, how do they traffic there? By addressing this question we found vessels that weren supposed to exist.
which is characterized by an accumulation of protein in the brain, Louveau said. e think that protein might start to accumulate in the meninges
and block those vessels and that might start the disease progressing. We are still working on it,
if any, the vessels play in everyday brain function. e know that the immune cells around the brain seem to be important for normal brain function
and we are going to address the question of how these vessels effect that normal brain function,
Louveau said. hey might have a role in normal brain physiology, but this is something we are going to work on
One nucleoporin protein in particular has a dramaticnd unanticipatedunction in the formation of neurons from stem cells. ee shone a new light on this class of proteins
but they started to differentiate into neurons. Nup153, researchers discovered, put the brakes on certain genes that need to be turned on for stem cells to turn into brain cells.
When the brakes are lifted, the stem cells start differentiating. his study not only revealed a critical function for nucleoporins in mediating the undifferentiated state of embryonic stem cells by silencing neural genes,
#Specific Roles of Adult Neural stem cells May be determined Before Birth Adult neural stem cells, which are thought commonly of as having the ability to develop into many type of brain cells,
are preprogrammed in reality before birth to make very specific types of neurons, at least in mice, according to a study led by UC San francisco researchers. his work fundamentally changes the way we think about stem cells,
said principal investigator Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, Ph d.,UCSF professor of neurological surgery, Heather and Melanie Muss Endowed Chair and a principal investigator in the UCSF Brain tumor Research center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research. t may be unwelcome
news for those who thought of adult neural stem cells as having a wide potential for neural repair.
and repair. eople have assumed that adult neural stem cells are undifferentiated similarly and self-renewing, said Alvarez-Buylla,
whose lab was the first to identify neural stem cells more than 20 years ago. e did not see that.
In mouse brains, as in human brains, adult neural stem cells reside on the walls of cavities called ventricles,
which are filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Using sophisticated DNA tagging techniques, Alvarez-Buylla and his team traced the development of mouse adult neural stem cells back to their embryonic progenitors.
They found that most neural stem cells are produced when the mouse embryo is between 13 and 15 days old,
uite early in embryonic brain development, said Alvarez-Buylla, and then remain quiescent until reactivated later in life.
Moreover, they found that the precise type of neuron that each adult neural stem cell can later develop into is determined by its location on the ventricle Wall in turn,
that location is fixed even earlier in embryonic development, as early as 11 days. o, in this study, we were met with a series of surprises,
Alvarez-Buylla said. ather than being continually self-renewing, these stem cells are produced at one time during development
it turns out that their role in the brain has been determined partly already before birth. The researchers had another surprise,
the scientists found that the mouse adult neural stem cells they studied are derived from embryonic neural stem cells that produce neurons in entirely different parts of the brain. his means that, somehow,
these cells go through a period of neuron production for the embryonic brain and then switch to a different mode and produce cells that get set apart to become adult neural cell progenitors,
said Alvarez-Buylla. hat is incredible is that the neurons that are produced in the embryo are extremely different than the neurons produced for the adult.
mouse brains have long been accepted as excellent basic research models for the human brain, he said.
Alvarez-Buylla also noted that the paper has possible implications for the success of human stem cell therapy in the brain
and nervous system. ne implication for humans has to do with the fact that so many different progenitor cells are needed to make the different types of neurons,
he said. hile it is true that we are learning how to reprogram adult stem cells to make different types of neurons,
if we don understand the embryology of the brain, going back to the origins of specific nerve cell types,
the likelihood of our being able to use stem cell therapy to repair brain injury is very low.
of which cooperate with cell surface receptors that control the binding of hormones and neurotransmitters, as well as a majority of pharmaceutical drugs.
#His and Her Pain Circuitry in the Spinal cord New research released today in Nature Neuroscience reveals for the first time that pain is processed in male and female mice using different cells.
or inflammation through the nervous system using an immune system cell called microglia. This new research shows that this is only true in male mice.
Interfering with the function of microglia in a variety of different ways effectively blocked pain in male mice,
said Michael Salter, M d.,Ph d.,Head and Senior Scientist, Neuroscience & Mental health at Sickkids and Professor at The University of Toronto,
the other coenior author. e believe that mice have very similar nervous systems to humans, especially for a basic evolutionary function like pain,
. or the past 15 years scientists have thought that microglia controlled the volume knob on pain,
The treatment approach developed at UNC uses a genetically modified virus called AAV to deliver a missing gene, the gigaxonin gene (scaav9/Jet-GAN), into the cerebrospinal fluid of children with GAN.
This trial is the first in history to deliver gene therapy through the spinal fluid to test the potential to achieve broad treatment of the spinal cord and brain (central nervous system or CNS.
which nerve cells of the spinal cord and brain need to be targeted, including spinal muscular atrophy. Bringing such path-breaking treatments to children affected by neurogenetic disorders is really the core mission of our team here at the NINDS
which will be given by a single injection by spinal tap into their cerebrospinal fluid, which flows around the brain and spinal cord.
Source: University of North carolina at Chapel Hil r
#Microarray for Research into Haematological and Solid Cancers Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) released a new microarray designed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of cancer research.
#Scientists Develop Model for Robots with Bacterial Brains Forget the Vulcan mind-meld of the Star trek generation as far as mind control techniques go,
"We found that robots may indeed be able to function with a bacterial brain, he said.
Potentially, the material could benefit clinical use in the treatment of the heart, liver and brain
New research indicates that Parkinson's disease may begin in the gastrointestinal tract and spread through the vagus nerve to the brain."
"We have conducted a registry study of almost 15,000 patients who have had the vagus nerve in their stomach severed.
If it really is correct that Parkinson's starts in the gut and spreads through the vagus nerve,
"Our study shows that patients who have had the the entire vagus nerve severed were protected against Parkinson's disease.
However, patients who had had only a small part of the vagus nerve severed where not protected. This also fits the hypothesis that the disease process is strongly dependent on a fully
or partially intact vagus nerve to be able to reach and affect the brain, "she says.
The research project has just been published in the internationally recognised journal Annals of Neurology. The first clinical examination The research has presented strong evidence that Parkinson's disease begins in the gastrointestinal tract and spreads via the vagus nerve to the brain.
Many patients have suffered also from gastrointestinal symptoms before the Parkinson's diagnosis is made.""Patients with Parkinson's disease are constipated often many years before they receive the diagnosis,
and gastroenterologic pathology related to the vagus nerve,"says Elisabeth Svensson. Previous hypotheses about the relationship between Parkinson's and the vagus nerve have led to animal studies
and cell studies in the field. However, the current study is the first and largest epidemiological study in humans.
"Now that we have found an association between the vagus nerve and the development of Parkinson's disease, it is important to carry out research into the factors that may trigger this neurological degeneration,
A team of researchers at the Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-Machine Interface (CNBI headed by José del R. Millán,
has however been working on a revolutionary brain-machine approach in order to restore a sense of independence to the disabled.
dedicated to brain-machine interfaces. 19 people tested, 100%success rate Nine disabled people and ten healthy people in Italy,
each of the subjects put on an electrode-studded hat capable of analysing their brain signals. They then instructed the robot to move,
Shared control between human and machine The brain-machine interface developed by the researchers goes even further.
Mature technology available The positive results of this research bring to a close the European project called TOBI (Tools for Brain-Computer Interaction
and a drug for multiple sclerosis to control immune response in the brain. Under the two approaches, immune cells from outside the brain were found to travel in greater numbers through the blood into the brain.
The study showed measurable benefits in mice an encouraging step toward further testing of these potentially powerful strategies in human trials.
Researchers point out that the brain's own immune cells are critical for its healthy function.
In this study, the researchers discovered that immune cells infiltrating the brain from the blood effectively resisted various abnormalities associated with the condition."
"These cells appear to work in the brain in several ways to counter the negative effects associated with Alzheimer's disease,
and the senior author of the article published in Brain, a journal of Oxford university Press."
In Alzheimer's disease, a protein fragment known as amyloid-beta builds up at the synapses of neurons the point where neuron-to-neuron communication occurs.
As a result, synapses are lost and cognitive function becomes severely impaired. Immune cells in the brain that are exposed to increasing concentrations of the toxic protein fragment deteriorate
and lose their ability to attack and clear away the buildup. Over time these cells themselves go awry,
contributing to harmful inflammation and becoming toxic to the neurons. During the course of the disease, cells that support the brain's structure and function also fail at the cellular and molecular levels,
steadily impairing memory and learning functions. In efforts to boost an effective immune response, the Cedars-Sinai scientists have devised ways to"recruit"white blood cells known as monocytes from bone marrow to attack the protein fragments
and preserve the synapses. The researchers evaluated two such methods and their therapeutic potential. In one, they extracted a specific type of monocytes from the bone marrow of healthy young mice
the drug has been shown to foster the migration of white blood cells from the bloodstream to the brain.
The varied approaches were effective in"recruiting"protective monocytes to"lesion sites"in the brain,
said Koronyo-Hamaoui, the head of Cedars-Sinai's neuroimmunology laboratory at themaxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and a faculty member in the Department of Neurosurgery and Department of Biomedical sciences.
can migrate into the brains of sick mice, directly clear abnormal protein accumulation and preserve cognitive function,"said Yosef Koronyo,
Koronyo added that the study gives unprecedented details about monocyte numbers migrating into brain lesion sites
and shows that the body's natural monocytes can have direct effects on the integrity of synapses.
the pancreas and the pituitary gland. Animal studies previously linked this gene mutation with breast cancer; and the researchers further conducted an analysis of the utchmen1 Study Groupdatabase.
and a few single amino acids function as signal-carrying neurotransmitters in the brain. Just twenty-one different amino acids are found in human proteins
Other challenges I see include low commercial investment in pediatric medicine and devices, development of effective therapeutics for neurodevelopmental disorders,
Then it combines the two into a dictionary in its digital brain. It then references this to answer new questions about never-before-seen images.
predict weather It seems three monkey brains are better than one when it comes to performing simple tasks using only the power of thought.
Scientists at Duke university wired the brains of adult rhesus macaque monkeys to form a network,
they were able to synchronize their brain activity to guide the arm of an avatar, allowing them to reach for a virtual ball.
However, in a second set of experiments, the team directly wired the brains of four rats together,
and to a computer, to allow the animals to transmit neural brain activity to each other. The team outfitted the animals with multi-electrode arrays in the motor and somatosensory (sense of touch) cortices to capture
and transmit their brain activity. The rats were able to recognize patterns in brain activity and a"brain-to-brain interface"was established.
Solved weather problems Some of the input or stimulation, represented data that included temperature and barometric pressure.
The rats were encouraged then, through a reward system, to solve a simple weather forecasting problem, such as whether it might rain.
Duke scientists say the results support earlier claims that brainets"may serve as test beds for the development of organic computers created by the interfacing of multiple animal brains with computers."
"Lead researcher Duke university Medical center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis reported on the first direct brain-to-brain interface between animals two years ago.
After experimenting with brain-to-machine interfaces for several years, he and his colleagues found the brain was much more plastic than they had thought.
Scientists said that with practice, the monkeys were easily able to mentally control two out of three dimensions of the virtual arm.
Applications for disabled people The Duke researchers have built previously BMIS (brain-machine interfaces) to capture
and transmit the brain signals of individual rats, monkeys, and even human subjects to artificial devices."
"This is the first demonstration of a shared brain-machine interface, a paradigm that has been translated successfully over the past decades from studies in animals all the way to clinical applications,
The Brazilian neurobiologist was part of a team of researchers who created a mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton worn by Juliano Pinto as the paraplegic man took part in the kickoff for the 2014 World cup in Sao paulo o
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