A molecular “recycling plant” permits nerve cells in the brain to carry out two seemingly contradictory functions – changeable enough to record new experiences, yet permanent enough to maintain these memories over time.
Get the full story...
The research group of Prof. Dr. Magdalena Götz at the Institute of Stem Cell Research of the GSF – National Research Centre for Environment and Health, and the Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, has achieved an additional step for the potential replacement of damaged brain cells after injury or disease: functional nerve cells can be generated from astroglia, a type of supportive cells in the brain by means of special regulator proteins.
Get the full story...
With ethical issues concerning use of discarded embryos and technical problems hindering development of stem cell therapies, scientists in Korea are reporting the first successful use of a drug-like molecule to transform human muscle cells into nerve cells.
Get the full story...
Two proteins that are implicated in autism have been found to control the strength and balance of nerve-cell connections, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
Get the full story...
An unexpected finding on how nerve cells signal to one another could rewrite the textbooks on neuroscience, says a collaborative team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and Yale University.
Get the full story...
One of the mysteries of the brain is how it avoids ending up in a state of chaos, something which happens only on exceptional occasions, when it can lead to epileptic fits. Scientists at Karolinska Institutet have now uncovered a new mechanism controlling how the brain keeps its neuronal activity in check.
Read the full story
Americans are bombarded with antismoking messages, yet at least 65 million of us continue to light up. Genetic factors play an important role in this continuing addiction to cigarettes, suggest scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Read the full story
The degeneration of brain cells that occurs in Parkinson's disease may be caused by either externally provoked cell death or internally initiated suicide when the molecule that normally prevents these fatal alternatives is missing, according to studies in mouse models by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Read the full story
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have shown that impaired function and loss of synapses in the hippocampus of a mouse form of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is related to the activation of immune cells called microglia, which cause inflammation. These events precede the formation of tangles - twisted fibers of tau protein that build up inside nerve cells - a hallmark of advanced AD. The researchers report their findings in the February 1 issue of Neuron.
Read the full story
A protein that causes coral to glow is helping researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine to light up brain cells that are critical for the proper functioning of the central nervous system.
Read the full story
Michael Stern's latest research into the formation of neurofibromatosis tumors reads something like a federal racketeering indictment, except that Stern's tracing proteins instead of laundered money, and he's looking not at offshore accounts but at biochemical paths of cause and effect.
Read the full story
Fruit flies' ability to discern one sex from another may depend on the number of receptors on the surface of nerve cells, and the number of receptors is controlled by levels of a ubiquitous brain chemical, University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have found.
Read the full story
