and rat brains in world-first experiment In a provocative study reminiscent of the hive mind network of Star Treksborg villains,
researchers have created shared brain networks for the first time by digitally linking multiple animal brains in two ground-breaking experiments.
Neuroscientists at Duke university in the US linked together the brains of monkeys and rodents in separate experiments to study how they can work together to perform simple computational tasks.
This means they could potentially outperform a regular brain, because they now have access to the resources of a hive mind. ssentially,
we created a super-brain, Miguel Nicolelis, the lead author of the study, told Hannah Devlin at The Guardian. collective brain created from three monkey brains.
Nobody has done ever that before. n the monkeys experiment, the researchers wired together three rhesus macaque monkeys
and transmit the brain activity. Once connected, the three monkeys were able to control the movements of a virtual avatar arm on a computer screen in front of them.
or better to that of an individual animal. his is the first demonstration of a shared brain-machine interface,
with brain rehabilitation in stroke victims mentioned as one of the opportunities the researchers are interested in exploring.
who was involved not in the research. ut there no guarantee that brain-to-brain interfaces will be a sensible thing in practice.
and paranoia, were triggered by a single pathway in the brain that was separate from the pathway that triggers the drug cancer-killing properties.
and the serotonin receptor-and these happened to be positioned very close together, which suggested that the drug was acting on both at the same time.
the team blocked the activity of a specific type of serotonin receptor-called 5ht2ar-in the brains of mice,
"These animals, lacking the serotonin receptor, showed differences only in the memory and mood tests-not in the pain tests,
if the same mechanisms are in play in human brains, and then see if they can mimic the same serotonin receptor-blocking effect they achieved in the mice.
Mccormick calls this effect a"Chinese wall"that sits between the serotonin and cannabinoid receptors, and thinks it could be the key to medical marijuana without the negative side effects."
"For me, the ideal drug would be in one of two scenarios: a drug that does not recognise the THC cannabinoid receptor when near serotonin,
or alternatively a drug you could add with THC that would provide that Chinese wall between the two,
#Paralysed patients take small steps thanks to a noninvasive new procedure Five men who were paralysed completely have taken voluntary step-like movements after undergoing a new type of noninvasive spinal cord stimulation.
The same research team had helped previously four other patients achieve small leg movements using spinal cord stimulation,
"These encouraging results provide continued evidence that spinal cord injury may no longer mean a lifelong sentence of paralysis and support the need for more research,"Roderic Pettigrew,
which mimics the action of serotonin and has been shown to help mice with spinal cord injuries move again.
At the start of the study the men's legs only moved when the electrical stimulation on their backs was strong enough to generate an involuntary step.
The researchers believe that the treatment works by helping to reestablish communication between the brain and spinal cord."
plaques in the brain when the molecule APP is abnormally cut by the enzyme BACE1 producing A?.
A major stumbling block in these efforts however is finding a way to do this without disturbing vital processes in the brain
and Naoyuki Taniguchi at RIKEN in collaboration with Tamao Endo and Shigeo Murayama at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology showed that much of the BACE1 found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients is modified by the attachment of a particular sugar with the help of the enzyme
Hypothesizing that preventing this process would relieve Alzheimer's symptoms the researchers crossed mice that lacked Gnt-III with others that express human APP in the brain.
While knocking out Gnt-III is feasible in mice a drug that inhibits Gnt-III in the brain has the potential to be an effective treatment for reducing A?
This provides the conditions needed to study primary cells, such as neurons, opening doors for exploration of the pathogenic mechanisms of neural diseases and potentially leading to new gene therapies.
#Novel eye-tracking technology detects concussions head injury severity Neuroscientists and concussion experts from NYU Langone and elsewhere in a study publishing online January 29 in Journal of Neurotrauma present a unique simple and objective diagnostic tool for concussion that can be utilized in the emergency room or one day
and fears among those affected and their families says lead investigator Uzma Samadani MD Phd assistant professor in the Departments of Neurosurgery Psychiatry Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone.
The eyes have served as a window into the brain with disconjugate eye movements--eyes rotating in opposite directions--considered a principal marker for head trauma as early as 3500 years ago.
and thus help the physician make a rapid and accurate diagnosis. By tracking eye movements they have been able to quantitatively assess the function of the brain.
or swelling in the brain as a potential biomarker for assessing brain function and monitoring recovery in people with head injuries.
and MRIS are ineffective in the absence of structural damage to the brain. Two patients who suffer a head injury
-and TBK1 meant that certain receptors in the fat cells of obese mice were unable to respond to neurotransmitters called catecholamines which are generated by the sympathetic nervous system
and LED strips thin enough to be implanted directly into the brain to illuminate neural pathways. His work in photovoltaics serves as the basis for commercial modules that hold the current world record in conversion efficiency.
Biocompatible flexible implant slips into the spinal cord EPFL scientists have managed to get rats walking on their own again using a combination of electrical and chemical stimulation.
But applying this method to humans would require multifunctional implants that could be installed for long periods of time on the spinal cord without causing any tissue damage.
Their e-Dura implant is designed specifically for implantation on the surface of the brain or spinal cord.
The risks of rejection and/or damage to the spinal cord have been reduced drastically. An article about the implant will appear in early January in Science.
they cannot be applied long term to the spinal cord or brain, beneath the nervous system's protective envelope,
otherwise known as the"dura mater, "because when nerve tissues move or stretch, they rub against these rigid devices.
the implant developed at EPFL is placed beneath the dura mater, directly onto the spinal cord. Its elasticity and its potential for deformation are almost identical to the living tissue surrounding it.
"Our e-Dura implant can remain for a long period of time on the spinal cord or the cortex,
precisely because it has the same mechanical properties as the dura mater itself. This opens up new therapeutic possibilities for patients suffering from neurological trauma or disorders,
particularly individuals who have become paralyzed following spinal cord injury, "explains Lacour, co-author of the paper,
it nonetheless includes electronic elements that stimulate the spinal cord at the point of injury. The silicon substrate is covered with cracked gold electric conducting tracks that can be pulled and stretched.
Finally, a fluidic microchannel enables the delivery of pharmacological substances--neurotransmitters in this case--that will reanimate the nerve cells beneath the injured tissue.
The implant can also be used to monitor electrical impulses from the brain in real time. When they did this
co-author and holder of EPFL's IRP Chair in Spinal cord Repair.""These include materials science, electronics, neuroscience, medicine,
and algorithm programming. I don't think there are many places in the world where one finds the level of interdisciplinary cooperation that exists in our Center for Neuroprosthetics."
"For the time being, the e-Dura implant has been tested primarily in cases of spinal cord injury in paralyzed rats.
This pathway produces several neurotransmitter regulators and is responsible for metabolizing nearly 99 percent of the tryptophan in the body.
Tryptophan is a precursor of serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for mood. The researchers determined the structure and mechanism of an enzyme in the kynurenine pathway, AMSDH.
#Tracking subtle brain mutations systematically Described in the January 7th issue of Neuron, the technique uses"deep,
"highly sensitive whole-genome sequencing of single neurons and a new technology that identifies inserted bits of DNA caused by retrotransposons,
one of several kinds of so-called somatic mutations that can arise as the brain develops.
The technique picks up somatic mutations that affect just a fraction of the brain's cells, in a"mosaic"pattern.
"showing when during brain development the mutations arise and how they spread through brain tissue as the mutated cells grow,
replicate and migrate, carrying the mutation with them.""There is a lot of genetic diversity from one neuron to the other,
and this work gets at how somatic mutations are distributed in the brain, "says Christopher Walsh, MD, Phd, chief of Genetics and Genomics at Boston Children's and co-senior author on the paper."
"Some mutations may occur on one side of the brain and not the other. Some may be clumped,'affecting just one gyrus fold of the brain,
disrupting just a little part of the cortex at a time.""The study examined brain tissue from a deceased 17-year-old who had been neurologically normal,
sampling in more than 30 brain locations. It builds on work published by the Walsh lab in 2012,
which developed methods to sequence the genomes of single neurons, and represents the first time single neurons have been sequenced in their entirety.
The single-cell technique is better at detecting subtle mosaicism than usual DNA sequencing methods,
which sequence many thousands or millions of cells mixed together and read out an average for the sample.
Somatic brain mutations, affecting just pockets of cells can be harmful, and have been suggested as a possible cause of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism,
epilepsy or intellectual disability (see this review article for further background). But they also can be completely benign
or have just a subtle effect.""Our findings are intriguing because they suggest that every normal brain may in fact be a mosaic patchwork of focal somatic mutations,
though in normal individuals most are likely silent or harmless,"says Gilad Evrony, Phd, in the Walsh Lab, co-first author on the Neuron paper."
"These same technologies can now be used to study the brains of people who died from unexplained neuropsychiatric diseases to determine
whether somatic mutations may be the cause.""Finally, says Evrony, the findings provide a proof-of-principle for a systematic way of studying how brain cells disperse
and migrate during development, "something that has not been possible to do before in humans, "he says.
study published by Walsh's lab in 2014 used single-neuron sequencing to detect copy number variants--another type of mutation affecting the number of copies of chromosomes or chromosome fragments.
The study found that these mutations can occur in both normal and neurologically diseased brains s
#Study pinpoints autism-linked protein for sculpting brain connections A new study by Duke researchers provides a close up of synapse refinement
and suicide but the molecule's role in the developing brain was mostly unknown until now.
The researchers focused on tiny protrusions of the neuron called spines that harbor synaptic connections.
Neuroscience has assumed long that these little nubs serve as sites for single synapses. But this study which appeared early online last month in the open access journal elife shows that in the brains of newborn mice some of the spines initially receive two or more inputs.
As the brain matures the spines then receive one. A technique known as three-dimensional electron microscopy made this observation possible.
I was excited very about this finding said first author William Christopher Risher a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of senior author agla Eroglu.
if anyone's really described multiple-synapse spines before. And there really hasn't been much.
The group also found that mice that are missing the gene that codes for the protein hevin retain more of these multiple synapses compared with normal mice.
As the developing brain prunes away synapses to become more efficient this could present problems.
Hevin was identified first in the miniscule spaces between synapses in 1990. However gene expression studies showed that it is churned actually out by non-neuronal cells called astrocytes.
Interested in the relationship between astrocytes synapse formation and disease Eroglu's group showed in 2011 that hevin triggers the formation of new neural connections.
That was the first description of hevin's function in the nervous system said Eroglu an assistant professor of cell biology and neurobiology and a member of the Duke Institute for Brain sciences.
We continued studying this protein because it is abundant in many brain regions both when synapses are forming
and also during adulthood Eroglu said. In the cortex an area of the brain important for complex thought
and awareness hevin encourages inputs from the thalamus--a part of the brain that acts as a relay center for sensory and motor information
--while it discourages inputs from local neurons within the cortex the group found. The spines that receive multiple synapses tend to be occupied by both cortical and thalamic connections at the same time suggesting that these spines are sites for synaptic competition.
The balance of those two types of types of connections in the cortex could go awry in neurological diseases such as autism
and depression Eroglu said. The group is now studying the molecular mechanisms of hevin and its potential contribution to health and disease.
Other authors include Sagar Patel Jonnathan Singh Alvarado Osman Calhan Il Hwan Kim Akiyoshi Uezu and Scott Soderling of Duke's Cell biology Department;
or classrooms said co-first author Mounir Koussa a Ph d. candidate in neurobiology at Harvard Medical school.
#Novel compound switches off epilepsy development In temporal lobe epilepsy seizures arise in the hippocampus and other structures of the limbic system located in the temporal lobe when a cascade of molecular and cellular events results in aberrant brain wiring.
The limbic system is the region of the brain associated with memory and emotions. Seizures reflect uncontrolled electrical brain activity.
The period between a brain injury and the onset of seizures called epileptogenesis is a silent period
because this brain abnormality cannot be detected by current neurological exams or electroencephalography (EEG). Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) or limbic epilepsy is a common adult epileptic disorder characterized by spontaneous recurrent seizures that may also spread to other brain regions triggering secondary severe generalized seizures.
Aside from neurosurgery which benefits only a small population of TLE patients there are no other effective treatments or preventive strategies.
Working in a mouse model the research team led by Drs. Nicolas Bazan Boyd Professor and Director of the LSU Health New orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence and Alberto Musto Assistant professor of Research Neurosurgery and Neuroscience found that brief small electrical microbursts
or microseizures occur before the onset of clinical recurrent seizures. When they systemically administered Neuroprotectin D-1 (NPD1) the researchers discovered that NPD1 regulated these bursts of brain electrical activity that not only reduced the aberrant brain cell signaling leading to severe generalized seizures but also spontaneous recurrent seizures.
Neuroprotectin D-1 discovered in the Bazan lab is derived from docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) an essential omega 3 fatty acid found in fish oil.
which DHA is released in the brain at the onset of seizures notes Dr. Bazan. Called the Bazan Effect in the literature with the discovery of NDP1 another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
The medial form accounts for almost 80%of all temporal lobe seizures. While medial temporal lobe epilepsy is a very common form of epilepsy it is also frequently resistant to medications.
The overall prognosis for patients with drug-resistant medial temporal lobe epilepsy includes a higher risk for memory and mood difficulties.
This in turn leads to impairments in quality of life and an increased risk for death as observed in patients who have frequent seizures failing to respond to treatment.
These observations will contribute to our ability to predict epileptic events define key modulators of brain circuits especially after a brain injury
and the brain might hold the key to creating therapeutic solutions for blindness stroke and other seemingly unrelated conditions associated with the central nervous system notes Dr. Bazan.
The eye is a window to the brain. Dr. Bazan and his research team discovered Neuroprotectin D1 (NPD1)
which is made from the essential fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Previous work showed that while it protected cells the molecular principles underlying this protection were known not.
whether a retina or brain cell will survive or die when threatened with disease onset. The gene mechanism that we discovered is the interplay of two genes turned on by the messenger Neuroprotectin D1.
and transferring light signals to the brain for decoding. The causal mechanisms of this disease remain elusive.
The researchers found that the powerful messenger NPD1 is produced on-demand in the brain and retina and that it elicits a network of positive signals essential for the well-being of vision and cognition.
and brain,"said Himanshu J. Patel, MD, from the University of Michigan Health System in Ann arbor.
or spinal cord ischemia (an inadequate blood supply to the spinal cord that can lead to paraplegia)."
the lithium atoms can build themselves into fernlike structures, called dendrites, which eventually poke through the membrane.
While the team is satisfied with the membrane's ability to block the lithium dendrites, they are currently looking for ways to improve the flow of loose lithium ions
The study,"A dendrite-suppressing solid ion conductor from aramid nanofibers, "will appear online Jan 27 in Nature Communications.
and neuroscientists to use to address questions ranging from fundamental mechanisms in cell biology to the underlying causes of mental illness to the discovery of novel therapeutics.
Ultimately it will help researchers achieve breakthroughs in a wide variety of areas in the life sciences such as neuroscience diabetes and cancer.
Protection was due in part to a preservation of the blood brain barrier, which prevented the entry of blood cells carrying the parasites into the brain.
As rapamycin is approved already FDA for use in humans, trials in humans for cerebral malaria treatment with this drug may be possible, according to the researchers e
#Brain secrets unlocked by international imaging effort NUI Galway professor of psychology Professor Gary Donohoe led The irish contribution to the study
The consortium known as the ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis) shared results from analyses of genetic data
The study looked at the size of sub-cortical brain regions that are involved in some basic functions such as memory movement learning and motivation.
Abnormalities in these brain regions are associated with neurological and mental health disorders. According to Professor Donohoe: For years scientists have been fascinated by the development of different brain structures and how this changes in brain-based disorders.
In this study we have used MRI scans to look at how the size of different brain regions is influenced by our genes
and obtained some fascinating results. We have found for example one gene variant that affects the size of the Putamen a region near the centre of the brain
which resembles the stone in the middle of a fruit. The Putamen is partly responsible for movement and learning and is implicated in Parkinson's disease.
This finding opens up new avenues for research in this disease by giving new clues about the biological mechanisms involved.
Knowledge about the genetic basis of these structures provides important insights into how the brain develops said Professor Donohoe.
and to understanding the basis of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders such as schizophrenia Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy.
ENIGMA's scientists screen brain scans and genomes worldwide for factors that help or harm the brain said ENGIMA cofounder Professor Paul Thompson from University of Southern California.
This crowdsourcing and sheer wealth of data gives us the power to crack the brain's genetic code.
Unless you know what'normal'development looks like it's hard to know how disease manifests in these sub-cortical regions.
By working together in large collaborative projects we can tackle these types of problems and further our understanding of the biology of the brain.
The study identified five genetic variants that influence the size of structures within the brain.
Of the genetic associations found the largest effect was seen for the Putamen a subcortical region located at the base of the forebrain
In follow up protein expression work this variant was found to alter the expression of KTN1 in frontal cortex.
The study also found evidence of several variants being associated with hippocampal volume (a brain region synonymous with memory encoding and retrieval) one
The article published in Nature today is'Common genetic variants influence human subcortical brain structures
#Neuroscientists lead global consortium to crack brain's genetic code In the largest collaborative study of the brain to date,
researchers from the Keck School of medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) led a global consortium of 190 institutions to identify eight common genetic mutations that appear to age the brain an average of three years.
An international team of roughly 300 scientists known as the Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis (ENIGMA) Network pooled brain scans
or break down key brain regions in people from 33 countries. This is the first high-profile study
"ENIGMA's scientists screen brain scans and genomes worldwide for factors that help or harm the brain--this crowdsourcing and sheer wealth of data gives us the power to crack the brain's genetic code,
or boost brain tissue in people worldwide. Any change in those genes appears to alter your mental bank account
or brain reserve by 2 or 3 percent. The discovery will guide research into more personalized medical treatments for Alzheimer's, autism, depression and other disorders."
"The study could help identify people who would most benefit from new drugs designed to save brain cells,
The ENIGMA researchers screened millions of"spelling differences"in the genetic code to see which ones affected the size of key parts of the brain in magnetic resonance images (MRIS) from 30,717 individuals.
The MRI analysis focused on genetic data from seven regions of the brain that coordinate movement, learning, memory and motivation.
The group identified eight genetic variants associated with decreased brain volume several found in over one-fifth of the world's population.
People who carry one of those eight mutations had, on average, smaller brain regions than brains without a mutation but of comparable age;
it shows how each individual's genetic blueprint shapes the human brain, "said Philip Bourne, Ph d.,associate director for data science at the NIH."
it can affect brain development. In order to prevent this, the babies'blood sugar levels need to be measured at regular intervals,
and possibly the overall aging process. said Audrey Tyrka MD Phd Director of the Laboratory for Clinical and Translational Neuroscience at Butler Hospital and Associate professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University.
Professor Mahiran said in pharmaceuticals an innovation has produced successfully a drugs delivery method to penetrate the'blood brain barrier'especially for diseases that are associated with the brain such as Alzheimer Parkinson epilepsy and meningitis.
Drugs are normally hard to make reach beyond the'blood brain barrier'.'Thus we created drugs through nanotechnology
and neuroscience research says Hillman who is also a member of Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
With SCAPE we can now image complex living things such as neurons firing in the rodent brain crawling fruit fly larvae
Highly aligned with the goals of President Obama's BRAIN INITIATIVE SCAPE is a variation on light-sheet imaging
The emergence of fluorescent proteins and transgenic techniques over the past 20 years has transformed biomedical research even delivering neurons that flash as they fire in the living brain.
Although confocal and two-photon microscopy can image a single plane within a living sample acquiring enough of these layers to form a 3d image at fast enough rates to capture events like neurons actually firing has become a frustrating
and her collaborators have used already the system to observe firing in 3d neuronal dendritic trees in superficial layers of the mouse brain.
Beyond neuroscience Hillman sees many future applications of SCAPE including imaging cellular replication function and motion in intact tissues 3d cell cultures
As a member of the new Zuckerman Institute and the Kavli Institute for Brain science at Columbia Hillman is working with a wide range of collaborators including Randy Bruno (associate professor of neuroscience Department of Neuroscience) Richard Mann
(Higgins Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics) Wesley Grueber (associate professor of physiology and cellular biophysics and of neuroscience Department of Physiology & Cell Biophysics
Deciphering the functions of brain and mind demands improved methods for visualizing monitoring and manipulating the activity of neural circuits in natural settings says Thomas M. Jessell co-director of the Zuckerman Institute and Claire Tow Professor of Motor neuron Disorders the Department of Neuroscience and the Department
of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia. Hillman's sophistication in optical physics has led her to develop a new imaging technique that permits large-scale detection of neuronal firing in three-dimensional brain tissues.
This methodological advance offers the potential to unlock the secrets of brain activity in ways barely imaginable a few years ago o
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