#Scientists develop an off-switch for the brain Scientists have developed essentially an ff-switchfor the brain by using light pulses to effectively shut down neural activity.
said this improved ffswitch will help researchers to better understand the brain circuits involved in behavior, thinking and emotion.
The technique could help scientists develop treatments for patients with some brain diseases as it could allow problematic parts of the brain to be switched off
and addressed with minimal intrusion
#Fewer high school graduates enroll in college after graduation The proportion of high school students in the U s. who go on to college rose regularly for decades
#Neuroscientists reverse symptoms of Alzheimer s in mice Researchers found that the overproduction of the protein known as p25 may be the culprit behind the sticky protein-fragment clusters that build up in the brains of Alzheimer patients.
Elevated p25 levels in the brain have been documented upon exposure to neurotoxic stimuli such as oxidative stress and beta amyloids. n this study
where memories are encoded in the brain, Tsai says. To delineate the precise roles of p25,
which enabled researchers to prevent the production of p25 without altering other proteins with essential roles in brain development.
the ability of brain connections to change over time; especially for the process called long-term depression (LTD) that selectively weakens sets of synapses
but also explains the underlying mechanism of the inordinate synaptic depression observed in the Alzheimer brain,
whether the blockade of p25 generation could mitigate pathological phenotypes in the Alzheimer brain, Tsai says.
and perhaps delaying the development of brain pathology, Tsai says. This work was supported in part by the National institutes of health and the Howard hughes medical institute M
The USS Zumwalt will be the first ship with a brain of its own. Among the high-tech features included on the USS Zumwaltannons that fire rocket-propelled,
in a key emotional hub in the brain involved in regulating anxiety and the flight-or-fight response.
a graduate student in Patel lab, the researchers also showed for the first time how nerve cells in this part of the brain make
whose brains are still developing are being exposed to the drug. Previous studies at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, Patel said,
In other more preliminary examples, scientists have shown that specific culture conditions can push stem cells to grow into self-organized structures resembling a developing brain, a bit of a liver,
or part of an eye (see esearchers Grow 3-D Human brain Tissues, Rudimentary Liver Is grown from Stem Cells,
That's the way the brain works. It's not that you have one brain that does the recognition
and one that does movement; it's a network that feeds on itself. Building that facial muscle memory also helps players recognize their own emotions
but may be implanted into the brains of living mice for imaging at the cellular level. The study appears in the Aug 18 issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.
whose team will use it to observe the brains of living mice to gain insight into how certain proteins in the brain react to various stimuli.
#IBM's new computer chip can think like a human brain IBM's latest brain-like computer chip may not be"smarter than a fifth-grader,
"but it can simulate millions of the brain's neurons and perform complex tasks using very little energy.
In addition to mimicking the brain's processing by themselves, individual chips can be connected together like tiles,
similar to how circuits are linked in the human brain. The team used its"Truenorth"chip, described on Aug 7 in the journal Science,
7 Robotic Futures"We have not built a brain. What we have done is learn from the brain's anatomy
and physiology,"said study leader Dharmendra Modha, manager and lead researcher of the cognitive computing groupat IBM Research-Almaden in San jose, California.
Modha gave an analogy to explain how the brain-like chip differs from a classical computer chip.
In contrast, IBM's new chip architecture resembles that of a living brain. The chip is composed of computing cores that each contain 256 input lines
"Much like in a real brain, the artificial neurons only send signals, or spikes, when electrical charges reach a certain threshold.
But if these devices can function more like a human brain, they may eventually understand their environments better,
Building a brain IBM researchers aren't the only ones building computer chips that mimic the brain.
The goal of this initiative is to build a computer that resembles the form and function of the mammalian brain, with intelligence similar to acat or mouse."
The team mapped out the wiring diagram of a monkey brain in 2010, and produced a small-scale neural core in 2011.
Still, the IBM chip is a far cry from a human brain, which contains about 86 trillion neurons and 100 trillion synapses."
#First map of human fetus brain created A new map of the human brain during its development in the womb provides a detailed blueprint of where different genes are active at this critical stage of in a fetus'life.
This brain atlas yields clues about what makes humans distinct from other animals and when disorders like autism first take root researchers say.
This is another installment in our suite of brain atlases to try to map how all genes are used across the brain
Mapping the Brain The institute has developed previously maps of the developing and adult mouse brain the developing monkey brain and the adult human brain.
The new map is the first to look at the developing human brain specifically the developing neocortex the seat of higher cognitive functions Lein told Live Science.
Researchers created the map using healthy prenatal brains from a brain bank a collection of donated human brains.
Researchers took snapshots of brains at two different stages of prenatal development. To measure gene activity the researchers used a powerful tool known as a DNA MICROARRAY
The team compared these gene activity results with data from other species in particular the mouse brain.
and these maps could give scientists insight into how mice brains are similar or different from human brains Lein said.
Researchers found some genes that were turned on in the developing human brain but not in the mouse's brain or vice versa.
For example the developing human brain contains genes that are more active in the frontal cortex than in the corresponding part of the mouse brain.
The frontal cortex is linked to personality and decision-making. Examples from the prenatal gene expression (left) and reference (right) atlases.
Allen Institute for Brain science) The map of a healthy developing brain also provides clues to the origin of developmental disorders such as autism the researchers said.
Taken together these brain maps paint a picture of where and when different genes become active in the brain.
The genes encode proteins that perform all the vital tasks inside neurons giving rise to the complex cognition of the human brain.
The Allen Institute is one of the private organizations involved in the BRAIN INITIATIVE (Brain research through advancing innovative neurotechnologies) launched by President Obama a year ago on April 2 2013.
All of the Allen Institute brain atlases are freely available online. The new findings are detailed on April 2 in the journal Nature.
and couldn't,"says Wiggins. He can now see areas of the brain that were previously dark to MRI."
The virus could be lurking in cells that doctors have not been able to test such as cells in the brain or heart.
Nature News Findings from a'brain training'study challenge theory. Researchers in Sweden have revealed a surprising change in brain biochemistry that occurs during the training of working memory,
a buffer that stores information for the few second required to solve problems or even to understand what we are reading.
Working memory depends on the transmission of signals in certain parts of the brain by the chemical dopamine and one of its receptors, the D1 receptor, particularly in the parietal and frontal regions of the cortex.
and his colleagues studied what happened to D1 receptors in the brains of healthy young men during such training1.
Brain training Klingberg's team organized a five-week training programme for 13 volunteers aged between 20 and 28.
"This is an important consideration that applies to many findings of purported brain changes in mental disease,"comments Sol Snyder, a neuroscientist at Johns hopkins university in Baltimore, Maryland."
"Many findings of altered brain biochemistry may simply reflect the patients'inattentiveness, he says. Klingberg says that his team's results may also have practical implications for training working memory.
He is one of the lead researchers in a multicenter clinical study using new exosomal diagnostic tests developed by New york city-based Exosome Diagnostics to identify a genetic mutation found exclusively in glioma, the most common form of brain cancer.
For brain cancers like glioma, however, multiple biopsies can be life threatening. Bob Carter head of neurosurgery at the University of California, San diego, says well-preserved RNA in blood
sponsored by the Accelerated Brain Cancer Cure Foundation. Hochberg says study researchers have recruited 41 of 120 patients so far.
brain parts and other tissues from stem cells (see Nature 488,444-446; 2012), has long been negotiating with the government for facilities to link basic research at the Center for Developmental biology in Kobe, where he works, with clinics and industry.
The Supreme court s move has reassured investigators such as Candace Kerr, who studies early development of the brain at the University of Maryland School of medicine in Baltimore.
He did so by injecting their brains with ZIP, a small peptide that is meant to block the enzyme1.
he strengthened rats'memory of unpleasant tastes by injecting their brains with viruses carrying extra copies of PKM?
#Intercontinental mind-meld unites two rats The brains of two rats on different continents have been made to act in tandem.
and signals to a similar device in the brain of a rat in the United states. The US rat then usually makes the same choice on the same task.
"But we created a new central nervous system made of two brains. Nicolelis says that the work,
is the first step towards constructing an organic computer that uses networks of linked animal brains to solve tasks.
and receive signals from the brain, allowing monkeys to control robotic or virtual arms and get a sense of touch in return.
whether he could use these implants to couple the brains of two separate animals. His colleague Miguel Pais-Vieira started by training one rat#the encoder#to press one of two levers,
from creating organic computers to uniting different parts of the same brain that have been cut off by damage or disease.
his team is already working to link the brains of four mice. The researchers are also set to start similar experiments with monkeys, in
Two rats exchange signals through a brain-to-brain interface. The yellow circle indicates the correct choice in each chamber
that is expressed in the brains of mice and humans. They found that it contains about 70 binding sites for a microrna called mir-7. Micrornas are short fragments of RNA that can block gene expression by binding to
or deleting mir-7 in zebrafish altered their brain development. Circular RNAS could also be sponges for microrna from outside the cell, notes Rajewsky.
#Babies'brains may be tuned to language before birth Despite having brains that are still largely under construction,
babies born up to three months before full term can already distinguish between spoken syllables in much the same way that adults do,
They were looking for the telltale signals of surprise that brains display#for example, when they suddenly hear male and female voices intermingled after hearing a long run of simply female voices.
The young brains were able to distinguish between male and female voices as well as between the trickier sounds ga and ba,
The work could also lead to better techniques caring for the most vulnerable brains, Wallois adds,
the first evidence that brains can distinguish between difficult consonants even before a full-term birth,
hinting at greater brain sensitivities than previously imagined5.##Yet this does not fully answer the innate-versus-learned question,
"It is possible that the experience of birth triggers a set of processes that prime the brain of a premature infant to respond to language in ways that a same-aged fetus will not
the rod and cone cells that convert light into electrical signals transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain s visual cortex for processing.
and monkey retinas use to turn light patterns into patterns of electrical pulses that their brains translate into meaningful images.
and the mini-projector then converts the electrical impulses into light impulses that are sent to the brain.
and send signals to the brain, this work focuses on the quality of the artificial signals themselves so as to improve their ability to carry impulses to the brain t
#How to turn living cells into computers Synthetic biologists have developed DNA modules that perform logic operations in living cells.
It was especially effective at triggering cell suicide in glioblastoma, a kind of brain tumour that is notoriously difficult to treat2.
Mice with glioblastomas that were treated with TIC10 in combination with bevacizumab#a drug used against diseases including brain tumours
which separates the main circulatory system from the brain. This barrier normally acts to prevent hazardous agents such as microbes from infecting the brain,
but can also thwart anticancer drugs by keeping them out.""We didn t actually anticipate that this molecule would be able to treat brain tumours#that was a pleasant surprise,
says El-Deiry. Furthermore, it seems that TIC10 activates the TRAIL gene not only in cancerous cells,
#Serotonin receptors offer clues to new antidepressants Researchers have deciphered the molecular structures of two of the brain's crucial lock-and-key mechanisms.
they might now be able to make breakthroughs in drug discovery and in understanding how the physical structures of the brain produce consciousness,
However, Anacker points out that serotonin receptors can have different effects depending on where in the brain they are located and other factors."
so that a person's left and right eyes see slightly different images#a requirement for the brain to process an image as 3d.
#Flashing fish brains filmed in action"It s phenomenal, says Rafael Yuste, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New york."
suggesting that it is not crazy to map every neuron in the brain of an animal.
Yuste has been leading the call for a big biology project2 that would do just that in the human brain,
which contains about 85,000 times more neurons than the zebrafish brain. The resolution offered by the zebrafish study will enable researchers to understand how different regions of the brain work together,
says Ahrens. With conventional techniques, imaging even 2, 000 neurons at once is difficult, so researchers must pick
for example, help to explain how the brain coordinates movement, consolidates learning or processes sights and smells."
"It allows a much better view of the dynamics throughout the brain during different behaviours
A microscope sends sheets of light rather than a conventional beam through the fish's brain,
The system records activity from the full brain every 1. 3 seconds. Ahrens, Keller and others have used previously light-sheet microscopy to image developing embryos over days3;
Ahrens and Keller think that it could work in intact mammal brains, but it would require surgery
and would cover only a small fraction of the brain. Another limitation is that neither the protein sensor nor the imaging system yet works fast enough to distinguish
But Fetcho says that it is fast enough to start to understand how activity flows through the brain.#"
#Wireless brain-computer interface streams thought commands with the speed of an Internet connection Following more than a decade of engineering work,
a wireless brain-computer interface could finally give paralyzed people the ability to control everyday devices like TVS, computers,
and transmit thought commands collected from a brain implant. The researchers say that the wireless BCI is able to stream thought commands via its radio at a rate of 48 megabits per second, about the speed of a home Internet connection.
and wired to electrodes inside the brain. The processor inside the device amplifies the electrical signals emitted by neurons,
Braingate was among the first to place implants in the brains of paralyzed people and show that electrical signals emitted by neurons inside the cortex could be recorded,
The brain itself is composed of some of the softest tissue in the body, so harder implants that don bend with their surrounding biological environment can easily shift
but anything implanted with the body has to be entirely non-reactive, especially in the brain.
#Network Dynamics with Brainx3 A large scale simulation of the human brain network with real time interaction. In order to address the big data challenge of the human brain,
researchers at the SPECS lab of Paul Verschure have developed recently Brainx3, which is a platform for visualization, simulation, analysis and interaction of large data,
On this platform, the researchers reconstructed a large-scale simulation of human brain activity in a 3d virtual reality environment.
Using the brain known connectivity along with detailed biophysics, the researchers reconstruct neuronal activity of the entire cortex in the resting-state.
Within the immersive mixed/virtual reality space of Brainx3 users can explore and analysis dynamical activity patterns of brain networks
the researchers have simulated also neural activity from lesioned brains and that resulting from TMS perturbation. These simulations shed insight on the spatial distribution of activity in the attractor state, how the brain maintains a level of resilience to damage, effects of noise and physiological perturbations.
Knowledge of brain activity in these various states is clinically relevant for assessing levels of consciousness in patients with severe brain injury y
even if the neural pathways from the brain are interrupted physically as the result of a spinal cord injury.
The results have now been published in the leading journal rain Although the brain or brain stem acts as the command center,
when the brain is involved no longer, as in the headless chicken running around the farmyard. Even after control by the brain has been lost,
the spinal cord continues to send out motor signals, which are translated into movements of the legs and/or wings.
Historically, these genetic brain diseases were viewed as untreatable. However, in recent years neuroscientists have shown in animal models that it is possible to reverse the debilitating effects of these gene mutations.
called FMR1, is turned off during brain development. Fragile X is rare, affecting one in about 4, 000 individuals.
Synaptic protein synthesis was disrupted indeed in the hippocampus, a part of the brain important for memory formation.
previously believed to be an intractable consequence of altered early brain development, might instead arise from ongoing alterations in synaptic signaling that can be corrected by drugs.
by removing a biochemical lampthat prevents connections between nerve cells in the brain from growing stronger.
but activating Camkii did not noticeably change anything. his gives us a much clearer idea of how some Syngap mutations cause problems in the brain,
#Researchers Redefine Role of Brain's'Hunger Circuit'Using techniques developed only over the past few years,
UC San francisco researchers have completed experiments that overturn the scientific consensus on how the brain unger circuitgoverns eating.
what this region of the brain is doing. It has been known for 75 years that a region at the base of the brain called the hypothalamus exerts profound control over eating behavior.
As neuroscientists refined this observation over the ensuing decades, they zeroed in first on a small area of the hypothalamus known as the arcuate nucleus,
which collectively occupy an area smaller than a millimeter in the mouse brain, are organized functionally in a seesaw-like fashion:
Hundreds of experiments in which scientists added hormones or nutrients to brain slices while recording the activity of Agrp
because the cells in this region are incredibly heterogeneous and located deep within the brain, said Chen. he technology to do this experiment has existed only for a few years.
the most adaptive brain mechanism would suppress the motivation to continue searching; likewise, since energy-dense foods alleviate hunger for longer periods,
the Mcknight Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Foundation, the Program for Breakthrough
Dr. Maniatis is also a member of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and director of Columbia university-wide precision medicine initiative. t now seems clear that future ALS treatments will not be equally effective for all patients because of the disease genetic diversity.
#New Brain Mapping Reveals Unknown Cell Types Using a process known as single cell sequencing, scientists at Karolinska Institutet have produced a detailed map of cortical cell types and the genes active within them.
and even managed to identify a number of hitherto unknown types. f you compare the brain to a fruit salad,
what colour juice you got from different parts of the brain, says Sten Linnarsson, senior researcher at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics. ut in recent years wee developed much more sensitive methods of analysis that allow us to see which genes are active in individual cells.
especially as regards the brain, the body most complex organ. In the present study, the scientists used large-scale single-cell analysis to answer some of these questions.
we have created a much more detailed map of the cells of the brain that describes each cell type in detail
There are estimated to be 100 million cells in a mouse brain and 65 billion in a human brain.
Nerve cells are approximately 20 micrometres in diameter, glial cells about 10 micrometres. A micrometre is equivalent to a thousandth of a millimetre.
the EU Seventh Framework Programme, the Swedish Society of Medicine, the Swedish Brain Fund, Karolinska Institutet strategic programme for neuroscience (Stratneuro), the Human Frontier Science Program
thereby helping to avoid the formation of highly toxic clusters that enable the condition to proliferate in the brain.
and more likely to experience increased brain atrophy than non-carriers. his study demonstrates that tau deposits in the brains of Alzheimer disease subjects are not just a consequence of the disease,
#What Autism Can Teach Us About Brain Cancer Both disorders involve faults in the same protein.
Applying lessons learned from autism to brain cancer, researchers at The Johns hopkins university have discovered why elevated levels of the protein NHE9 add to the lethality of the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma.
Their discovery suggests that drugs designed to target NHE9 could help to successfully fight the deadly disease.
for treating a deadly brain cancer says Rajini Rao, Ph d, . a professor of physiology at the Johns hopkins university School of medicine. his is a great example of the unexpected good that can come from going wherever the science takes us.
when placed on a surface mimicking that of the brain, suggesting a high potential for metastasis
or low NHE9, were transplanted into the brains of mice. This image is a drawing of a brain.
The overactive NHE9 protein is shown in blue over the brain. The argo carriers, or endosomes, of certain brain cancer cells contain overactive NHE9 proteins (blue),
which pump out too many protons (orange), changing the endosomesacidity and slowing their hipping speed.
Image credit: Hari Prasad and Rajini Rao. Based on their autism research, the team suspected that the boost NHE9 gave to glioblastomas was explained by abnormal endosome acidity.
NHE9 is overactive in brain cancer, causing endosomes to leak too many protons and become too alkaline.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found diverse genomic changes in single neurons from the brains of Alzheimer s patients pointing to an unexpected factor that may underpin the most common form of the disease.
A new study published February 4 2015 in the online journal elife shows that Alzheimer s brains commonly have many neurons with significantly more DNA and genomic copies of the Alzheimer s-linked gene APP than normal brains.#
#Our findings open a new window into the normal and diseased brain by providing the first evidence that DNA variation in individual neurons could be related to brain function
Alzheimer s disease is an irreversible brain disease that tends to strike older people. It is progressive#impairing memory destroying motor skills and eventually causing death.
Researchers have known long about disease-related protein accumulations (called amyloid plaques) in the brains of Alzheimer s patients.
#In 2001 Chun was the first to report that the brain contains many distinct genomes within its cells#much like the colorful tiles in an artist#s mosaic.#
#When we started genomic mosaicism in the brain was recognized not#said Chun.##But it turns out there is a remarkable range of genomic changes encompassed by DNA content variation in single brain cells.#
#In the new study Chun and his colleagues first set out to analyze the overall DNA content in cells comparing 32 postmortem Alzheimer s brains and 21 postmortem non-diseased brains.
Remarkably the researchers found that more than 90 percent of sporadic Alzheimer s disease brains displayed highly significant DNA increases of hundreds of millions more DNA base-pairs compared with control samples showing that genomic mosaicism was altered in the Alzheimer s brain.
but were greatest in a part of the brain involved with complex thought. Next the researchers used a technique called single-cell qpcr to determine the numbers of APP copies in 154 individual neurons from Alzheimer s and normal brains.
They also tested the neurons using a technique called FISH as an independent method to assess APP copies using fluorescent probes.
#A lot of people are still not aware of genomic mosaicism in the brain so to be able to connect it with a disease is really interesting#said Gwen Kaeser a graduate student studying in Chun#s lab and co-first author of the study with former graduate student Diane Bushman.
Indeed a majority of major brain diseases are also sporadic. For example amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can be linked to a gene in one to two percent of cases
Chun believes genomic mosaicism could possibly have a role in other brain diseases. Future studies in the Chun lab will investigate the relationship between mosaicism
In addition to Chun Kaeser and Bushman other authors of the study#Genomic mosaicism with increased amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene copy number in single neurons from sporadic Alzheimer s disease brains#were Jurgen
Full open access research for#Genomic mosaicism with increased amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene copy number in single neurons from sporadic Alzheimer s disease brains#by Diane M Bushman
#Previous reports have shown that individual neurons of the brain can display somatic genomic mosaicism of unknown function.
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