#Volcanic eruption on Cape verde Island A team from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences is currently conducting research to support local partners
#Team enlarges brain samples making them easier to image A team of researchers from MIT has taken now a novel approach to gaining such high-resolution images:
You physically make the sample bigger rather than trying to magnify the rays of light that are emitted by the sample says Ed Boyden an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.
Unfortunately in biology that's right where things get interesting says Boyden who is a member of MIT's Media Lab and Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research.
If you want to map the brain or understand how cancer cells are organized in a metastasizing tumor
Using this technique the MIT team was able to image a section of brain tissue 500 by 200 by 100 microns with a standard confocal microscope.
The researchers envision that this technology could be very useful to scientists trying to image brain cells
Especially for the brain you have to be able to image a large volume of tissue
While Boyden's team is focused on the brain other possible applications for this technique include studying tumor metastasis
and millions worldwide The retina converts images into electrical signals that can be processed by the brain.
They found most already had roles in other organ and tissue systems such as the brain, digestive and circulatory systems.
#Missing link found between brain, immune system; major disease implications"Instead of asking,'How do we study the immune response of the brain?''
''Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?''now we can approach this mechanistically. 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.
But now we can ask mechanistic questions.""""We believe that for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it,
"Arraykevin 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.
Arraythe 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,
#Epicenter of brain's predictive ability pinpointed by scientists Now, Uni ver sity Dis tin guished Pro fessor Lisa Feldman Bar rett at North eastern has reported finding the epi center of those predictions.
Bar rett explained that limbic parts of the brain send pre dic tions to visual neu rons
but really the brain is built for things to work the other way around: you see (and hear and smell and taste) what you believe.
In her paper, Bar rett shows that your brain is wired not to be a reac tive organ.
""What your brain is trying to do is guess what the sen sa tion means and what's causing the sen sa tions
"Your brain is trying to put together thoughts, feel ings, and per cep tions so they arrive as needed, not a second afterwards. a
A master clock in the brain, tuned to the daily cycle of light and dark, sends out signals that synchronize the molecular clocks ticking away in almost every cell and tissue of the body.
This test consists of extracting a sample of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) with a syringe inserted between two vertebrae in the lumbar region."
-and obtains a high-resolution image of the area which stores the cerebrospinal fluid, located between the skin and the brain.
The image obtained is analysed then by image-processing algorithms to determine the presence of cells indicating infection
but information about the presence or absence of cells in the cerebrospinal fluid. This means it can be used without having to undergo specialised training,
#Psychology researchers report a major discovery of harmony amid chaos The researchers say the study demonstrates that inherent delays in the nervous system may play a constructive role in enabling individuals to anticipate the movement of others.
"In addition to the fact that we know we have these intrinsic delays in our nervous system, our experiment sort of built on
because it could potentially change the way we understand how the nervous system works and how perpetual-motor delays play a role in human behavior,
'Glucose transporter type 1, called GLUT1, transports glucose across the cell membrane of most cells in the body and is especially important in the uptake of glucose by the brain and blood vessels,
and developmental delays as infants because insufficient glucose is transported to the brain.''With our ongoing studies on the regulation of GLUT1 by phosphorylation, we hope to identify pathways that may improve the diagnosis
#Single protein causes Parkinson's disease and multiple system atrophy Typical of neurodegenerative disorders is disrupted the communication between brain cells together with a loss of cells in specific brain regions.
For some brain diseases this phenomenon is linked to a protein known as alpha-synuclein. The exact function of this protein remains unclear,
but it may play a role in the communication between brain cells. However, in the case of specific diseases, including Parkinson's disease, Multiple System Atrophy (MSA),
"When alpha-synuclein aggregates accumulate within a brain cell, they interfere with the normal functioning of the cell.
The protein aggregates disrupt the communication between brain cells, resulting in cell death. Up to now, nobody understood how aggregates of this single protein could induce different pathologies,
"says Professor Veerle Baekelandt from the Research Group for Neurobiology and Gene therapy.""You could compare it to the construction of a house,
We injected these fibres separately into the brain and blood stream of rats. We noticed that the rats developed different symptoms:
A drug that counteracts the development of aggregates could be used to treat a whole range of brain diseases
#Scientists grow multiple brain structures and make connections between them Human stem cells can be differentiated to produce other cell types, such as organ cells, skin cells, or brain cells.
While organ cells, for example, can function in isolation, brain cells require synapses, or connectors, between cells and between regions of the brain.
In a new study published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, researchers report successfully growing multiple brain structures
and forming connections between them in vitro, in a single culture vessel, for the first time.""We have developed a human pluripotent stem cell (hpsc)- based system for producing connections between neurons from two brain regions,
the neocortex and midbrain,"explained lead investigator Chun-Ting Lee, Phd, working in the laboratory of William J. Freed, Phd, of the Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug abuse, National institutes of health, Baltimore, MD.
Mesencephalic dopaminergic (mda) neurons and their connections to other neurons in the brain are believed to be related to disorders including drug abuse, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease,
and perhaps eating disorders, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, Tourette's syndrome, and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. However studying mda neurons and neocortical neurons in isolation does not reveal much data about how these cells actually interact in these conditions.
This new capability to grow and interconnect two types of neurons in vitro now provides researchers with an excellent model for further study."
"This method, therefore, has the potential to expand the potential of hpsc-derived neurons to allow for studies of human neural systems
and interconnections that have previously not been possible to model in vitro, "commented Dr. Lee. Using a special container called an"ibidi wound healing dish,
"which contains two chambers separated by a removable barrier, the researchers used hpsc to grow mda neurons and neocortical neurons in the two individual chambers.
The barrier was removed after colonies of both types of cells had formed and further growth resulted in the formation of synapses between neurons from each colony.
Future experiments could employ modifications of this method to examine connections between any two brain regions
or neuronal subtypes that can be produced from hpscs in vitro o
#Vitamin d status related to immune response to HIV-1 Arraythe researchers looked at two ethnic groups in Cape town, South africa,
to see how seasonal differences in exposure to ultraviolet B radiation, dietary Vitamin d, genetics, and pigmentation affected Vitamin d levels,
Even in the brain, where it is most common, 5fc is only present at around 10 parts per million or less.
The lack of uptake in the non-dividing adult brain tissue pointed to the fact that 5fc can be a stable modification:
and proliferation of these neuron-damaging compounds--a discovery that may accelerate the development of new drugs to treat this incurable disease.
which--like many neurodegenerative diseases--is characterized by an accumulation of misfolded mutant proteins that interfere with brain function.
As part of their study, the researchers introduced a new screening test that measures mutant huntingtin protein seeding in cerebrospinal fluid,
Through the device, patients with retinitis pigmentosa are able to see patterns of light that the brain learns to interpret as an image.
#Artifical neuron mimicks function of human cells Scientists at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet have managed to build a fully functional neuron by using organic bioelectronics.
This artificial neuron contain no'living'parts, but is capable of mimicking the function of a human nerve cell
and communicate in the same way as our own neurons do. Neurons are isolated from each other
and communicate with the help of chemical signals, commonly called neurotransmitters or signal substances. Inside a neuron, these chemical signals are converted to an electrical action potential,
which travels along the axon of the neuron until it reaches the end. Here at the synapse
the electrical signal is converted to the release of chemical signals, which via diffusion can relay the signal to the next nerve cell.
To date, the primary technique for neuronal stimulation in human cells is based on electrical stimulation. However, scientists at the Swedish Medical Nanoscience Centre (SMNC) at Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with collegues at Linköping University, have created now an organic bioelectronic device that is capable of receiving chemical signals,
which it can then relay to human cells.""Our artificial neuron is made of conductive polymers
and it functions like a human neuron, "says lead investigator Agneta Richter-Dahlfors, professor of cellular microbiology."
"The sensing component of the artificial neuron senses a change in chemical signals in one dish,
and translates this into an electrical signal. This electrical signal is translated next into the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in a second dish,
whose effect on living human cells can be monitored.""The research team hope that their innovation,
presented in the journal Biosensors & Bioelectronics, will improve treatments for neurologial disorders which currently rely on traditional electrical stimulation.
The new technique makes it possible to stimulate neurons based on specific chemical signals received from different parts of the body.
In the future, this may help physicians to bypass damaged nerve cells and restore neural function.""Next, we would like to miniaturize this device to enable implantation into the human body,
"says Agneta Richer-Dahlfors.""We foresee that in the future, by adding the concept of wireless communication, the biosensor could be placed in one part of the body,
and trigger release of neurotransmitters at distant locations. Using such auto-regulated sensing and delivery,
"This study was made possible by funding from Carl Bennet AB, VINNOVA, Karolinska Institutet, the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Brain Power, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Royal
and brain stem atrophy and a general weakness of the muscles affecting locomotion, eye movement, swallowing and speech.
and cause a stroke if it lodges in a blood vessel in the brain. As such, understanding what controls the stability of plaques is extremely important."
#New information on brain development, fertility discovered The protein CEP63 is crucial for the correct division of brain stem cells.
This defect in brain growth is present in several neurodevelopmental diseases, including Seckel syndrome.""There are diagnostic tests for some of these kinds of pathologies that can be performed during pregnancy,
The scientists describe that this protein triggers the death of brain stem cells. This occurs because cells without CEP63 have delayed cell division,
"Cell death due to mutations in CEP63 is the main cause of the brain defects. When we prevent cell death by removing p53 from developing embryos,
the brain develops to its normal size, "explains Jens Lüders, head of the Microtubule Organization Lab. This finding paves the way to study
Also, a normal sized brain does not imply a functional brain, "warn the researchers.""Our next goal is to test the p53 inhibitors currently available in the same mouse models
Bat expert Michael Yartsev, a newly hired UC Berkeley assistant professor of bioengineering and member of the Helen wills said Neuroscience Institute
"says Jeffrey Holt, Phd, a scientist in the Department of Otolaryngology and F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children's and an associate professor of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical school.
helping convert sound into electrical signals that travel to the brain. The researchers tested gene therapy in two types of mutant mice.
In the recessive deafness model, gene therapy with TMC1 restored the ability of sensory hair cells to respond to sound--producing a measurable electrical current--and also restored activity in the auditory portion of the brainstem.
In the dominant deafness model, gene therapy with a related gene, TMC2, was successful at the cellular and brain level,
generating an electrical signal that travels to the brain and ultimately translates to hearing. Although the channel is made up of either TMC1 or TMC2
which is important for neuro-regeneration, as well as cleavage of a protein relevant for metastasizing of cancer cells.
#Gene therapy advance thwarts brain cancer in rats Researchers funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging
and Bioengineering have designed a nanoparticle transport system for gene delivery that destroys deadly brain gliomas in a rat model,
--which by itself has no effect on cancer cells--into a compound that is toxic to actively dividing brain cancer cells.
Next, the gene therapy system was tested in live rats with brain gliomas. Because it is important that the nanoparticles spread throughout the entire tumor,
"The results provide the first demonstration of a successful non-viral nanomedicine method for HSVTK/ganciclovir treatment of brain cancer,"stated Green."
and evaluating the technology in additional brain cancer animal models.""In the future, the investigators envision that doctors would administer this therapy during the surgery commonly used to treat glioma in humans.
"Currently, most people with depression take medications that increase levels of the neurochemical serotonin in the brain.
The most common of these drugs, such as Prozac and Lexapro, are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIS.
Dr. Thompson and his team focused on another neurotransmitter besides serotonin, an inhibitory compound called GABA.
Brain activity is determined by a balance of opposing excitatory and inhibitory communication between brain cells. Dr. Thompson and his team argue that in depression,
excitatory messages in some brain regions are not strong enough. Because there is no safe way to directly strengthen excitatory communication,
they examined a class of compounds that reduce the inhibitory messages sent via GABA. They predicted that these compounds would restore excitatory strength.
called GABA-NAMS, minimize unwanted side effects because they are precise: they work only in the parts of the brain that are essential for mood.
The researchers tested the compounds in rats that were subjected to chronic mild stress that caused the animals to act in ways that resemble human depression.
Giving stressed rats GABA-NAMS successfully reversed experimental signs of a key symptom of depression, anhedonia,
"In tests on the rats'brains, the researchers found that the compounds rapidly increased the strength of excitatory communication in regions that were weakened by stress
For example, nerve cells can grow without multiplying and there is no cell growth during the initial cell divisions of the oocyte following fertilisation.
Researchers said a protein product from CADM2 is involved in the short-term and long-term chemically mediated communication between brain cells
which are areas of the brain known to be involved in processing speed as well as in the developing brain."
and analytic resources, is significantly enhancing our ability to identify genes related to complex brain functions and disease."
#Discovery about brain protein causes rethink on development of Alzheimer's disease Researchers at the University of Melbourne have discovered that a protein involved in the progression of Alzheimer's disease also has properties that could be helpful for human health.
The discovery helps researchers better understand the complicated brain chemistry behind the development of Alzheimer's disease, a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of Australians.
may act as a sponge that safely binds a metal that can damage brain tissue when it's in excess.
This is because clumps of the protein are formed in brains of people with the illness. In the late 1990s, high levels of copper were discovered within these clumps.
"We know that the shorter form of beta amyloid is present in the diseased brain,
but we now know that it is abundant in healthy brains as well.""The small change in length makes a huge difference to its copper binding properties.
This will enable them to screen how much copper it holds in the brain, whether it safely escorts the copper from one place to another,
"As the amount of beta amyloid in the brain increases during Alzheimer's disease, the shorter form can also clump together
Other deadly cancers, including brain, pancreatic, ovarian, and colonic cancers also can have high levels of IL13RA2
#Injectable Brain Implant Spies on Individual Neurons A simple injection is now all it takes to wire up a brain.
A diverse team of physicists, neuroscientists and chemists has implanted mouse brains with a rolled-up, silky mesh studded with tiny electronic devices,
and stimulate individual neurons. The implant has the potential to unravel the workings of the mammalian brain in unprecedented detail. think it great,
a very creative new approach to the problem of recording from large number of neurons in the brain, says Rafael Yuste, director of the Neuro technology Center at Columbia University in New york,
who was involved not in the work. If eventually shown to be safe, the soft mesh might even be used in humans to treat conditions such as Parkinson disease,
Neuroscientists still do not understand how the activities of individual brain cells translate to higher cognitive powers such as perception and emotion.
or ideally millions, of neurons at once, but the use of brain implants is limited currently by several disadvantages.
So far, even the best technologies have been composed of relatively rigid electronics that act like sandpaper on delicate neurons.
They also struggle to track the same neuron over a long period, because individual cells move
when an animal breathes or its heart beats. The Harvard team solved these problems by using a mesh of conductive polymer threads with either nanoscale electrodes
Each strand is as soft as silk and as flexible as brain tissue itself. Free space makes up 95%of the mesh
how do you get that into an existing brain? says Lieber. The team answer was to tightly roll up a 2d mesh a few centimetres wide
and mingles with the tissue (see ugging the brain. Nanowires that poke out can be connected to a computer to take recordings
So far, the researchers have implanted meshes consisting of 16 electrical elements into two brain regions of anaesthetized mice
and stimulate individual neurons. The mesh integrates tightly with the neural cells, says Jia Liu, a member of the Harvard team, with no signs of an elevated immune response after five weeks.
Neurons ook at this polymer network as friendly, like a scaffold he says. The next steps will be to implant larger meshes containing hundreds of devices, with different kinds of sensors,
or by developing wireless technologies that would record from neurons as the animals moved freely.
The team would also like to inject the device into the brains of newborn mice where it would unfold further as the brain grew,
and to add hairpin-shaped nanowire probes to the mesh to record electrical activity inside and outside cells.
There is huge potential for techniques that can study the activity of large numbers of neurons for a long period of time with only minimal damage,
who has developed a gelatin-based eedlefor delivering electrodes to the brain. But he remains sceptical of this technique:
Lieber team is funded not by the US govern ment US$4. 5-billion Brain research through advancing innovative neurotechnologies (BRAIN INITIATIVE, launched in 2013,
who was an early proponent of the BRAIN INITIATIVE. Bringing physical scientists into neuroscience he says,
could help to reak through the major experimental and theoretical challenges that we have to conquer
in order to understand how the brain worksthis article is reproduced with permission and was published first on June 8, 2015 s
modeled on brain cell networks, that they claim can take any image and generate a caption
what brains are doing, Zemel says, particularly in terms of representing the outside world and in devoting ttentionto specific parts of a scene. t getting toward
#Important Link between the Brain and Immune system Found When the ancient Egyptians prepared a mummy they would scoop out the brain through the nostrils and throw it away.
While other organs were preserved and entombed, the brain was considered separately from the rest of the body,
and unnecessary for life or afterlife. Eventually, of course, healers and scientists realized that the three pounds of entangled neurons beneath our crania serve some rather critical functions.
Yet even now the brain is viewed often as somewhat divorced from the rest of the body;
a neurobiological Oz crewing our bodies and minds from behind the scenes with unique biology and unique pathologies.
and brain concerns the immune system. When exposed to foreign bacteria, viruses, tumors, and transplant tissue, the body stirs up a torrent of immune activity:
Except, that is, in the brain. Thought to be too vulnerable to host an onslaught of angry defensive cells,
the brain was assumed to be protected from this immune cascade. However research published last month reported a previously unknown line of communication between our brains
and immune systems, adding to a fast-growing body of research suggesting that the brain and body are connected more than previously thought.
The new work could have important implications for understanding and treating disorders of the brain.
As early as 1921 scientists recognized that the brain is different immunologically speaking. Outside tissue grafted into most parts of the body often results in immunologic attack;
tissue grafted into the central nervous system on the other hand sparks a far less hostile response. Thanks in part to the blood-brain barrier tightly packed cells lining the brain's vessels that let nutrients slip by,
but, for the most part, keep out unwanted invaders like bacteria and viruses the brain was considered long"immunologically privileged,
meaning it can tolerate the introduction of outside pathogens and tissues. The central nervous system was seen as existing separately from the peripheral immune system,
left to wield its own less aggressive immune defenses. The brain privilege was considered also to be due to its lack of lymphatic drainage.
The lymphatic system is our body's third and perhaps least considered set of vessels the others being arteries and veins.
Lymphatic vessels return intracellular fluid to the bloodstream while lymph nodes stationed periodically along the vessel network serve has storehouses for immune cells.
But it was assumed that this doesn occur in the brain given its lack of a lymphatic network,
which is why the new findings represent a dogmatic shift in understanding how the brain interacts with the immune system.
lead author and University of Virginia neuroscience professor Dr. Jonathan Kipnis and his group identified a previously undetected network of lymphatic vessels in the meninges the membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord that shuttle fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid to a group of lymph nodes in the neck, the deep cervical lymph nodes.
Kipnis and colleagues had shown previously that a type of white blood cell called T-cells in the meninges are associated with significant influences on cognition
and hence were curious about the role of meningeal immunity on brain function. By mounting whole mouse meninges and using neuroimaging the team noticed that T-cells were present in vessels separate from arteries and veins
confirming that the brain does in fact have a lymphatic system linking it directly the peripheral immune system. e stumbled upon these vessels completely by serendipity,
Kipnis commented. The newly discovered vessels which were identified also in human samples could explain a variety of pathophysiological conundrums,
namely how the immune system contributes to neurological and psychiatric disease. t early to speculate, says Kipnis,
"For example MS, at least in some cases, is thought to result from autoimmune activity in response to an infection in the central nervous system and cerebrospinal fluid.
and transmission of a protein called amyloid in the brain. It could be that the amyloid isn't being cleared properly via these lymphatic vessels,
and that somehow improving their patency might help rid the brain of the pathologic protein.
Other recent work by Kipnis and colleagues found that an injury to the central nervous system results in a strong activation of T-cells in the deep cervical lymph nodes.
that too much or too little drainage from the central nervous system to the immune system might contribute to brain disease.
and perhaps worsening of autoimmune disorders that affect the brain; and also that in light of the new findings the textbooks might need some revising t has become increasingly clear that the central nervous system is immune different rather than immune privileged,
he says. It been clear for decades that there is some kind of relationship between the brain and the immune system.
Abnormal immune activity was reported in schizophrenia in the 1930s, and numerous mental and neurologic illnesses are known
anatomical structure facilitating this relationship suggests that the brain and body are intertwined intimately, and that the brain is not the citadel it was thought once to be. s
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011