which nerve growth factor (NGF) was injected into their brains, report researchers at University of California, San diego School of medicine in the current issue of JAMA Neurology.
Administering NGF directly into the brain a first for treating of an adult neurodegenerative disorder was done for two reasons.
By precisely injecting NGF into targeted regions of the brain researchers could introduce the protein only to surrounding degenerating neurons.
The participants lived one to 10 years after treatment. ll of the Alzheimer disease brains showed anatomical evidence of a growth response to the growth factor,
like the eyes, kidney, brain and bone. But this new research found that in certain patients with AML a type of blood cancer that affects white blood cells
stopped brain cancer in rats by delivering gene therapy through nanoparticles. The nanoparticles deliver genes for an enzyme that converts a prodrug called ganciclovir into a glioma cell killer.
not just those in the brain. sing this method, we can isolate the portion of a cell that comes in contact with another cell,
Both groups have similar looking brains with higher levels of the protein beta amyloid. In fact, patients with Down syndrome develop the abnormal protein at twice the rate.
where in the brain they were located and the effects of the plaques on cognition. To quantify how much amyloid was present in the brain, the study included extensive neuroimaging such as volumetric MRI
amyloid PET, FDG PET, and retinal amyloid imaging. his study shows some of the earliest known Alzheimer disease biomarker changes in adults with Down syndrome
#Researchers Discover Method to Measure Stiffness of Arteries in the Brain UCLA researchers have discovered a noninvasive method to measure vascular compliance,
or how stiff an artery is, in the human brain, a finding that may have ramifications for preventing stroke and the early diagnoses of Alzheimer disease.
when the heart was pumping the blood into the brain, and again at the diastolic phase,
an associate professor of neurology and a researcher in the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA. ascular compliance is a useful marker for a number of cardiovascular diseases,
suggesting stiff arteries impair the blood supply to the brain. Additionally, they found artery stiffness is correlated with the stiffness of the largest artery of the human body,
#Stem Cell Research Hints at Evolution of Human brain The human cerebral cortex contains 16 billion neurons,
Now, researchers at UC San francisco have succeeded in mapping the genetic signature of a unique group of stem cells in the human brain that seem to generate most of the neurons in our massive cerebral cortex.
published Sept. 24 in the journal Cell, support the notion that these unusual stem cells may have played an important role in the remarkable evolutionary expansion of the primate brain. e want to know what it is about our genetic heritage that makes us unique,
and director of the Eli and Edyth Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF. ooking at these early stages in development is the best opportunity to understand our brain evolution.
Building a brain from the inside out The grand architecture of the human cortex with its hundreds of distinct cell types, begins as a uniform layer of neural stem cells and builds itself from the inside out during several months of embryonic development.
where nearly all neurons are produced by stem cells called ventricular radial glia (vrgs) that inhabit a fertile layer of tissue deep in the brain called the ventricular zone (VZ).
In 2010, Kriegstein lab discovered a new type of neural stem cell in the human brain, which they dubbed outer radial glia (orgs)
what allowed primate brains to grow to their immense size and complexity. e wanted to know more about the differences between these two different stem cell populations,
which produce 10 to 100 daughter cells during brain development, a single human org can produce thousands of daughter neurons,
as well as glial cellson-neuronal brain cells increasingly recognized as being responsible for a broad array of maintenance functions in the brain.
New insights into brain evolution development and disease The discovery of human orgsself-renewing niche and remarkable generative capacity reinforces the idea that these cells may have been responsible for the expansion of the cerebral cortex in our primate ancestors,
The research also presents an opportunity to greatly improve techniques for growing brain circuits in a dish that reflect the true diversity of the human brain,
a common brain cancer whose ability to grow, migrate and hack into the brain blood supply appears to rely on a pattern of gene activity similar to that now identified in these neural stem cells. he cerebral cortex is so different in humans than in mice,
Kriegstein said. f youe interested in how our brains evolved or in diseases of the cerebral cortex, this is a really exciting discovery.
The study represents the first salvo of a larger BRAIN INITIATIVE-funded project in Kriegstein lab to understand the thousands of different cell types that occupy the developing human brain t the moment
we simply don have a good understanding of the brain arts list? Kriegstein said, ut studies like this are beginning to give us a real blueprint of how our brains are built.
Major funding for the research was provided by the National institutes of health, the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute,
and the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation e
#Gene Test Finds Which Breast cancer Patients Can Skip Chemo Many women with early-stage breast cancer can skip chemotherapy without hurting their odds of beating the disease-good news from a major study that shows
and to be involved in brain formation, but has now been identified as a key part of photoreceptor proteins the structures that allow organisms to sense
#An Accessible Approach to Making a Mini-brain If you need a working miniature brain say for drug testing, to test neural tissue transplants,
The little balls of brain aren performing any cogitation, but they produce electrical signals and form their own neural connections synapses making them readily producible testbeds for neuroscience research,
Just a small sample of living tissue from a single rodent can make thousands of mini-brains,
The mini-brains, about a third of a millimeter in diameter, are not the first or the most sophisticated working cell cultures of a central nervous system
and the mini-brains are simple to make, said co-lead author Yu-Ting Dingle,
the paper shows. 25-cent mini-brains There are fixed costs, of course, but an approximate cost for each new mini-brain is on the order of $0. 25,
said study senior author Diane Hoffman-Kim, associate professor of molecular pharmacology, physiology and biotechnology and associate professor of engineering at Brown. e knew it was a relatively high-throughput system,
but even we were surprised at the low cost per mini-brain when we computed it, Hoffman-Kim said.
and Eric Darling are all co-authors to build the mini-brains. She wanted to develop a testbed for her lab basic biomedical research.
The method they developed yields mini-brains with several important properties: -Diverse cell types: The cultures contain both inhibitory and excitatory neurons and several varieties of essential neural support cells called glia.
Experiments showed that the mini-brains have a density of a few hundred thousand cells per cubic millimeter,
which is similar to a natural rodent brain. -Physical structure: Cells in the mini-brain produce their own extracellular matrix,
producing a tissue with the same mechanical properties (squishiness) as natural tissue. The cultures also don rely on foreign materials such as scaffolds of collagen.
and the Center for Biomedical engineering, said she hopes the mini-brains might proliferate to many different labs,
in order to generate an in vitro model of the brain, Hoffman-Kim said. The National Science Foundation, the National institutes of health, the Brown Institute for Brain science,
so that we can more easily study the effects of aging on the brain, said study author Rusty Gage, a professor in the Salk Institute Laboratory of Genetics.
This made it difficult to study the aging of the human brain because researchers couldn create aged brain cells. s researchers starting using these cells more,
After, they compared the patterns of gene expression in the resulting neurons with cells taken from autopsied brains.
said Mertens. nd they actually show changes in gene expression that have been implicated previously in brain aging.
signals brain tissue to form new connections to compensate for the damage and initiate repairs to the brain.
The finding could eventually lead to a new treatment to promote brain repair and functional recovery in people who have suffered a stroke,
or GDF10, a molecule that previously had known no role in the adult brain, said Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael,
and programs in the UCLA department of neurology. he brain has limited a capacity for recovery after stroke,
then it might be possible to enhance brain repair after stroke. The study, which appears Oct 26 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Neuroscience,
which molecules become more prevalent in the brain during the recovery period after a stroke,
researchers believed that one of the molecules on the list could be a signal telling the brain to repair itself after a stroke,
and they screened for the molecules that saw the biggest increase in the brain after stroke.
After finding that GDF10 was a possible signal for brain repair, the team analyzed the molecule in a petri dish.
The scientists found that GDF10 promotes brain cellsability to form new connections and they identified the signaling systems that control the process. e found that GDF10 induces new connections to form in the brain after stroke,
and that this mediates the recovery of the ability to control bodily movement, Carmichael said.
or off by GDF10 in brain cells after a stroke and compared the cellsrna to RNA in comparable cells during brain development and normal learning,
The discovery indicates that brain tissue regenerating after a stroke is a unique process rather than just a reactivation of the molecules that are active in brain development.
and then mapped the connections in the brain that are tied to body movement. They compared those to the connections in animals who had experienced a stroke
in animals with healthy brains and with animals that had experienced a stroke and had reduced a level of GDF10. he results indicated that GDF10 normally is responsible for the very limited process of the formation of new connections after stroke,
and does so mostly in a specific brain circuit. The formation of connections in this circuit with GDF10 administration significantly enhanced recovery of limb control after stroke.
or vocabulary notes tucked under their pillow in the hope that the knowledge would somehow be transferred magically into their brains
The researchers were focused particularly on the role of the hippocampus-a region of the brain in
Meningitis causes severe neck pain after a bacterial infection of the lining surrounding the brain
whose advanced ALK-positive lung cancer progressed on crizotinib. ancer spreads to the brain in about half of people with ALK-positive lung cancer,
whose disease had spread to the brain or other parts of the CNS. In addition, the people whose tumors shrank in response to alectinib continued to respond for a median of 11.2 months (DOR
whose disease had spread to the brain or other parts of the CNS. In addition the people whose tumors shrank in response to alectinib continued to respond for a median of 7. 5 months (DOR, immature data.
a compound that deactivates pain receptors in the brain. nzymes make and break molecules, said Stephanie Galanie, a Phd student in chemistry and a member of Smolke team. heye the action heroes of biology.
in order to craft a molecule that emerged ready to plug pain receptors in the brain. Engineered with a purpose In their Science paper,
#Computer system Being developed to Predict Change In The Alzheimer's Brain, MIT Study MIT researchers are developing a computer system that uses genetic, demographic,
and clinical data to help predict the effects of disease on brain anatomy. In experiments, they trained a machine-learning system on MRI data from patients with neurodegenerative diseases
In the cases of patients with drastic changes in brain anatomy, the additional data cut the predictionserror rate in half,
The researchersfirst step is to produce a generic brain template by averaging the voxel values of hundreds of randomly selected MRI scans.
The brains of healthy subjects and subjects in the early stages of neurodegenerative disease change little over time,
But they instead used it to predict what the brains of Alzheimer patients would have looked like had they not been disfigured by disease.
Both cardiac cells in the heart and neurons in the brain communicate by electrical signals,
and shape of such excitation waves would mean unprecedented direct control of organ-level function, in the heart or brain,
including those in our own brains and hearts r
#Another Dimension: 3-D Cell Growth Opens New Pathway For Spinal cord Repair, Griffith University Study Griffith University researchers have opened a new avenue to advance a therapy to repair the paralysed spinal cord.
While in space, he will wear a special dosimeter to study the effects of space radiation on the brain.
#Paralyzed man walks again using brain-computer link A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics,
The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord and instead send messages through a computer algorithm to electrodes placed around the patient's knees to trigger controlled leg muscle movements.
but incremental achievement in the development of brain-computer interfaces that may one day help stroke
brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury,"said biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic, who led the research. 3. 6 metres The steps taken a year ago by the experiment's subject,
Practised with virual reality In previous research by other scientists, a brain-computer interface has been used to allow paralyzed patients to grasp a cup of coffee with a robotic arm
which he practiced thinking about walking to produce necessary leg-moving brain waves. Those signals were picked then up by an electroencephalogram (EEG) he wore as a cap
or brain, allowing for clearer reception of the neural messages and perhaps the delivery of pressure sensation from sensors in the foot back to the brai i
Now scientists have shown it does this by permanently changing the nerve pathways in the brain that control certain social behaviours.
In experiments in mice, the scientists mapped oxytocin to unique receptor cells in the left side of the brain's cortex.
'EEG or Electroencephalography measures electrical activity in the brain using pads on the scalp, and is used to diagnose epilepsy and sleep disorders.
#Brain training app that could help schizophrenia sufferers live a normal life A new brain training app developed to help improve the memory of people with schizophrenia could save taxpayers thousands of pounds,
Its aim is to train the brain in episodic memory, which helps people remember events such as where they parked their car in a multi-storey car park
-which is why scientists at Cambridge university developed the brain training app to help. The computer game is called Wizard
Professor Sahakian and colleagues began a collaboration with the team behind the popular brain training app Peak
#Neuroon mask helps you avoid jet lag by tricking brain into changing time zones A revolutionary smart mask promises to help you stave off the dreaded effects of jet lag by preparing your body for the time difference before you even board the flight.
and artificially triggers sensors in your eyes during the flight to trick the brain into adjusting to the new time zone.
which artificially triggers the light sensors in a person's eyes to make their brain believe the sun is coming up.
Or it can trick the brain into thinking it is in a different time zone. Mr Adamczyk said:'
'The Neuroon is an artificial light source-it activates the light sensitive receptors that send information to our brains.'
'More specifically it targets the pineal gland-the part of the brain that produces melatonin, the sleep hormone.'
and with light therapy it can manage the production of sleep hormone in the brain.'
This is found in many organs including the brain, and can make mice cleverer and at the same time less fearful.'
INTELLIGENT MICE CREATED WITH'HALF-HUMAN'BRAINS Last year, mice injected with human brain cells grow to have'half human brains'that make them smarter than other rodents,
scientists have found. Researchers claim that giving mouse pups a type of immature human brain cell,
known as glial cells, caused their brains to grow differently so they became more humanlike. These human glial cells,
which are the support cells of the brain providing it with structure and nutrients, multiplied and grew to replace a similar type of cell in the brains of the mice.
While the mice still had their own neurons-the cells that transmit and store information in the brain-the support cells were almost entirely human, according to the researchers.
Tests in these mice showed that they appeared to have better memories than those that did not have these hybrid brains.
It is thought the human cells improved the efficiency of the mice brains. The results have raised the prospect that it may be possible to make animals smarter by injecting them with human brain cells.
And they were quicker at learning the location of a hidden escape platform. They were also less able to recall a fearful event after several days than ordinary mice,
and as PDE4B is also found in humans, this could be of interest in the search for treatments for brain conditions as well as mental decline linked to aging.
The experiments also showed that PDE4B-inhibited mice suffered less anxiety, choosing to spend more time in open, brightly lit spaces than normal mice,
which preferred dark, enclosed spaces. And while mice are scared naturally of cats, the modified mice responded less fearfully to cat urine,
#Human brain grown in a LAB that could help Alzheimer's research A near-complete human brain comparable with that of a five-week-old foetus has been grown in a laboratory dish.
The brain'organoid'was created from reprogrammed skin cells and is about the size of a pencil eraser.
and dendrites-the'brain'also contains support and immune cells. It has 99%of the genes present in the foetal brain
a rudimentary spinal cord, and even the beginnings of an'eye'.'Lead researcher Professor Rene Anand, from Ohio State university in the US, said:'
'It not only looks like the developing brain, its diverse cell types express nearly all genes like a brain.'
'We've struggled for a long time trying to solve complex brain disease problems that cause tremendous pain and suffering.'
'The power of this brain model bodes very well for human health because it gives us better
and more relevant options to test and develop therapeutics other than rodents.''To build the replica brain, the team transformed adult skin cells into induced pluripotent stem (ips) cells by altering their genes.'
'The artificially created stem cells were coaxed then into developing the different cell types and signalling circuitry of the brain.
Full details of the brain growing process are being kept confidential by the scientists but involved causing the stem cells to differentiate into the full range of brain tissues.
The organoid was allowed to grow to the equivalent of 12 weeks in the womb, almost matching the maturity of a five-week-old foetal brain.'
'If we let it go to 16 or 20 weeks that might complete it, filling in that 1%of missing genes,'said Prof Anand.'
Already the scientists have gone on to create brain organoid models of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and autism, in a dish.
what it touches through a microchip in his brain Scientists working with Darpa have developed a robotic arm that can'feel'It allowed a 28-year-old paralysed man'feel'for the first time in a decade A tiny array of electrodes were implanted into the sensory part of his brain Force
and transmitted into Nathan's brain. The electrodes can also detect electrical signals from his brain.
This allows him to not only control the hand's movements but to feel what the mechanical fingers are touching.
He said'Using advanced technologies that translate the forces applied to the fingertips of the robotic hand into electrical signals that could be used to directly stimulate the sensory neurons in the brain,
and feel what the robotic hand was touching using only his brain.''Through neurotechnology we're opening up entirely new worlds of experience and independence.'
It uses microarrays of electrodes that can be implanted into the brains of volunteers to pick up tiny electrical pulses from the neurons.
Crucially, only the'yes'signal was strong enough to fool their brain into seeing a flash of light.
'This is the most complex brain-to-brain experiment, I think, that has been done to date in humans.'
'They have to interpret something with their brains they have seen never before.''Writing in the journal Plos One,
the researchers say they are now researching'brain tutoring'transferring signals directly from teacher to pupil or from the brain of a healthy person to a stroke patient.
#Scientists discover how to'turn off'pain by altering chemistry in the brain Patients can be made more resistant to pain by altering the structure of their brains,
Scientists discovered for the first time that people left in agony by arthritis develop more receptors in the brain that respond to opiate pain relief.
They then scanned their brains with a PET SCANNER to count the number of opiate receptors.
something as simple as taking exercise could also boost opiate receptors. e know that exercise can activate the natural opiate system in the brain,
due to the addictive nature of these drugs. he notion of enhancing the natural opiates in the brain, such as endorphins,
me to be infinitely preferable to long term medication with opiate drugs. nything that can reduce reliance on strong medication must be worth pursuing. piate receptors were discovered first in the brain in 1973.
The microridges on the fingertip are designed especially to fine-tune perception of surface texture and transfer sensory information to the brain.
Real skin transmits pressure information as short pulses of electrical signals that are sent to the brain.
Motorcycle headgear absorbs energy from a crash to protect your brain as well as your skull Experts have created a helmet with built-in suspension to protect your brain as well as your skull.
the brain is still susceptible to injuries from impacts. The 6d helmet contains a foam liner inside
which can cause the brain to spin inside the skull and lead to brain injuries. Bob Weber, cofounder of 6d helmets, said the combination of the suspension system
An array of 27 dampers work in unison to isolate impact energy from the brain. The elasticity of the dampers,
Both cardiac cells in the heart and neurons in the brain communicate by electrical signals,
and shape of such excitation waves would mean unprecedented direct control of organ-level function, in the heart or brain,
including those in our own brains and hearts s
#How proteins age Physiological processes in the body are in large part determined by the composition of secreted proteins found in the circulatory systems,
AGS is a rare genetic disorder that mainly affects the brain, while SLE can affect the skin, joints, kidneys, brain,
and other organs. Neither disease has a cure only treatments to control symptoms. Dr. Chen said cgas is likely amenable to inhibition by small-molecule drugs
which controls the wiring of the brain in fruit flies. Dscam1 has the potential of making 38,016 possible isoforms,
To study how many different isoforms of Dscam1 actually exist in a fly's brain, the researchers first had to convert Dscam1 RNA into DNA.
Rajadinakaran took a fruit fly brain, extracted the RNA, converted it into DNA, isolated the DNA copies of the Dscam1 RNAS,
the lungs, liver, brain or bones. They analysed the proteins in their exosomes, nearly a thousand proteins,
in order to improve the predictive power of the integrins--with specific analytical technologies that are yet to be developed--to identifying other'zip codes'that determine metastasis to the brain or bones.
stealth bombs that slip past the brain's defenses to attack an incurable form of cancer.
Efstathios Karathanasis, a biomedical engineer at Case School of engineering, has developed chainlike nanoparticles that can carry drugs across the blood-brain barrier that keeps standard medicines from reaching their target--a highly aggressive brain cancer called
which provide structure to the brain. The median survival rate among adults is just under 15 months, according to the American Brain Cancer Association.
The blood-brain barrier that normally protects the brain from harm becomes a deadly impediment when tumors are present,
preventing drugs from crossing from the blood stream into the diseased tissue. And"surgeons can't go in
"Brain tumor cells are often invasive and spread throughout the normal brain, and drugs--if they get in--do nothing because of resistance that develops."
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