Findings of a new study support further investigation of sildenafil as a possible treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
Category: neuroscience
Major leap towards reanimation after death as mammal’s brain preserved
An entire mammalian brain has been successfully preserved using a technique that will now be offered to people who are terminally ill. The intention is to preserve all the neural information thought necessary to one day reconstruct the mind of the person it once belonged to.
“They would need to donate their brain and body for scientific research,” says Borys Wróbel at Nectome in Portland, Oregon, a research company focused on memory preservation. “But what we are offering, as a company, is for their body and brain to be kept, essentially indefinitely, in the hope that sometime, in the future, it would be possible to read out the information from the brain and reconstruct the person… to allow them to continue, in effect, with their life.”
When it comes to preserving the minute architecture of the brain, timing is critical. Within minutes of blood no longer circulating, enzymes break down neurons and cells start digesting themselves.
Image: Samunella/Science Photo Library
A pig’s brain has been frozen with its cellular activity locked in place and minimal damage. Some believe the same could be done with the brains of people with a terminal illness, so their mind can be reconstructed and they can “continue with their life”
Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay orchestrates neuronal migration and cortical lamination while modulating Reelin and ciliary gene regulatory networks
Lin et al. show that nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is essential for neuronal migration and cortical lamination. UPF2 regulates expression of Reelin signaling and microtubule genes via Ino80 and represses ciliary gene Foxj1 to assure normal migration, revealing a key regulated RNA decay mechanism in brain development.
Cortically-mediated muscle responses to balance perturbations increase with perturbation magnitude in older adults with and without Parkinson’s disease
New in eNeuro from Boebinger et al: Compared to young adults, older people with and without Parkinson’s disease have larger brain responses and muscle signals that hinder their balance recovery ability.
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We lack a mechanistic understanding of how cortical contributions to balance control change in aging and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Balance is governed by brainstem circuits, with higher-order centers like the cortex or basal ganglia becoming engaged as challenge increases or balance health declines. We previously showed that parallel sensorimotor feedback loops engaging brainstem and cortical circuitry contribute to muscle activity for balance control in young adults (YAs). Here, we analyze data from male and female older adults (OAs) with and without PD, decomposing perturbation-evoked tibialis anterior and medial gastrocnemius muscle activity into hierarchical components based on latencies of feedback control loops. We found that balance-correcting muscle activity followed a stereotypical waveform of long-latency responses (LLRs): LLR1 began ∼120ms and LLR2 occurred ∼210ms, respectively, consistent with subcortical and cortical feedback latencies. Both LLRs increased with balance challenge and could be explained by center of mass kinematics. Perturbation-evoked antagonist muscle activity consisted of destabilizing and stabilizing components categorized based on whether they resist the kinematic errors that drive their activation. The destabilizing component occurred at ∼180ms and was negatively correlated with clinical measures of balance ability in the OA but not PD group. Exploratory comparisons showed OA and PD groups had larger LLR2s at lower challenge levels than YAs, consistent with greater cortical engagement during balance with aging. These findings demonstrate that a neuromechanical model can decompose perturbation-evoked muscle activity into hierarchical components related to clinical balance ability and identify mechanistic changes in the neural control of balance without direct brain measurements.
Significance Statement We show that reactive balance recovery in older adults with and without Parkinson’s disease can be decomposed into distinct components that reflect hierarchical brainstem, cortical, and basal ganglia feedback loops. Using a neuromechanical model of delayed task-level feedback control, we link these components to perturbation difficulty and clinical balance ability in older adults. This framework connects specific features of agonist and antagonist muscle activity to underlying neural control processes without requiring direct brain recordings. Our findings provide a mechanistic basis for age-and disease-related changes in balance control that can inform individualized assessment and future rehabilitation strategies.
Ultrastructural preservation of a whole large mammal brain with a protocol compatible with human physician-assisted death
Ultrastructural Preservation of a Whole Large Mammal Brain (bioRxiv, 2026) ⚠️ Preprint – not yet peer-reviewed.
A 2026 preprint builds on over a decade of brain preservation research, demonstrating that whole mammalian brains (pigs) can be preserved with remarkable structural fidelity under near–real-world, end-of-life conditions.
The study refines aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (ASC)—a technique previously recognized by the Brain Preservation Foundation. This method combines chemical fixation (aldehydes), cryoprotectants, and controlled cooling to prevent ice damage and preserve neural structure at the nanoscale. — What the study shows.
Whole pig brains preserved with intact cellular and synaptic architecture.
Preservation remains viable even with delayed postmortem intervals (~10 minutes)
Tissue remains perfusable and structurally stable after fixation.
Protocol moves toward clinically realistic implementation, not just lab conditions.
Protein atlas connects the biological dots underlying neurodegenerative diseases
Neurodegenerative diseases form a tangled biological web with overlapping molecular signatures and symptoms. To decode this complexity, a multi-institute collaboration led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists developed the pan-neurodegeneration atlas (PanNDA). The atlas is a comprehensive survey of neurodegenerative disease “proteomes” containing information about protein levels, modifications, and interactions. This resource, published today in Cell, provides a wide-ranging protein-based outlook to better understand the origins of neurodegenerative diseases and to aid in their diagnosis and treatment.
Neurodegenerative diseases often stem from protein misfolding or accumulation. These errors also disrupt binding partners, upstream and downstream effectors, and any connected pathways. By combining multiple proteomic strategies, co-corresponding authors Junmin Peng, Ph.D., St. Jude Departments of Structural Biology and Developmental Neurobiology, and Bin Zhang, Ph.D., Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, created PanNDA to understand and explore this network and how it is disrupted in these diseases.
Scientists revive activity in frozen mouse brains for the first time
A familiar trope in science fiction is the cryopreserved time traveller, their body deep-frozen in suspended animation, then thawed and reawakened in another decade or century with all of their mental and physical capabilities intact.
Researchers attempting the cryogenic freezing and thawing of brain tissue from humans and other animals — mostly young vertebrates — have already shown that neuronal tissue can survive freezing on a cellular level and, after thawing, a functional one to some extent. But it has not been possible to fully restore the processes necessary for proper brain functioning — neuronal firing, cell metabolism and brain plasticity.
A team in Germany has now demonstrated a method for cryopreserving and thawing mouse brains that leaves some of this functionality intact. The study, published on 3 March in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 3, details the authors’ use of a method called vitrification, which preserves tissue in a glass-like state, along with a thawing process that preserves living tissue.
“If brain function is an emergent property of its physical structure, how can we recover it from complete shutdown?” asks Alexander German, a neurologist at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in Germany and lead author of the study. The findings, he says, hint at the potential to one day protect the brain during disease or in the wake of severe injury, set up organ banks and even achieve whole-body cryopreservation of mammals.
Mrityunjay Kothari, who studies mechanical engineering at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, agrees that the study advances the state of the art in cryopreservation of brain tissue. “This kind of progress is what gradually turns science fiction into scientific possibility,” he says. However, he adds that applications such as the long-term banking of large organs or mammals remain far beyond the capabilities of the study.
Article Featured in Nature.
Scientists Identified a Speech Trait That Foreshadows Cognitive Decline
Early signs of Alzheimer’s disease may be hidden in the way a person speaks, but it’s not yet clear which details of our diction are most critical for diagnosis.
A study from 2023 suggests that as we age, how we say something may matter more than what we say. Researchers at the University of Toronto think the pace of everyday speech may be a better indicator of cognitive decline than difficulty finding a word.
“Our results indicate that changes in general talking speed may reflect changes in the brain,” said cognitive neuroscientist Jed Meltzer when the research was published.
The Comb Jelly ‘Brain’ Is Far More Complex Than We Ever Realized
Comb jellies – very simple, gelatinous creatures best-known for their hypnotic underwater light shows – first appeared in Earth’s oceans around 550 million years ago.
For a long time, biologists have kind of considered them the living embodiment of ‘no thoughts, head empty’
But a new study suggests their central sensory organ is far more complex and brain-like than we realized.