These mini brain organoids resemble the developing cortex â the area of our brains that think, feel and store memories.
This advancement will help us learn more about conditions like dementia, but what if we go too far and they become conscious?
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While investigating the FGF21-oxytocin-dopamine system, a mechanism that regulates sugar appetite, a team of researchers at Kyoto University noticed reports suggesting that the protein FGF21 may regulate alcohol ingestion.
The teamâs original aim had been to address sugar appetite in lifestyle-related diseases, but since alcohol is a fermented product of sugar, they speculated that perhaps the body contains a system that recognizes both alcohol and sugar as the same entity.
Alcohol consumption and intervention challenges Excessive alcohol consumption is a major global health issue, and effective countermeasures for prevention and treatment are limited. Patients with alcohol dependence generally have a low adherence to pharmaceuticals, and many avoid drug treatment because it deprives them of the pleasure of drinking.
If you name it, you can tame it. Thatâs a new tool for fighting cigarette cravings, according to assistant research psychologist Golnaz Tabibnia.
Her discovery, published in Neuropsychopharmacology, reveals that a technique she dubbed âcue labelingââmentally naming the triggers that make you want to smokeâcan reduce the subjective experience of craving and the brain activity associated with it.
âName it to tame it! Putting feelings into words has long been known to calm emotions,â Tabibnia wrote on LinkedIn when announcing the publication. âOur latest paper shows that putting what we crave into words can help calm cravings.â
People who are exposed to certain forever chemicals may be at greater risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), according to new research.
No one knows why that is, but it could help explain why, over the past 30 years, the prevalence of MS has increased by an average of 26 percent globally. In some nations, cases have more than doubled since 1990.
MS is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system with no known singular cause and no known cure.
Researchers at Lund University have developed a new method to reprogram the brainâs support cells into parvalbumin neurons, the cells that help keep brain activity in balance. These cells are key in conditions like epilepsy, and creating them in the lab has long been a challenge.
By bypassing the stem-cell stage, the team can now generate these neurons faster and more efficiently. The breakthrough opens new possibilities for studying disease mechanisms, and, in the future, for replacing damaged brain cells.
Read about the research here: https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/researchers-create-âŠp-its-cool.
Photo: Hal Gatewood, Unsplash.
Lund University. Parvalbumin cells play a central role in keeping brain activity in equilibrium. They control nervcell signalling, reduce overactivity and make sure that the brain is working to a rhythm. Researchers sometimes describe them as the cells that âmake the brain sound rightâ.When these cells malfunction or decrease in number, the balance of the brain is disrupted. Previous studies suggest that damaged parvalbumin cells may contribute to disorders such as schizophrenia and epilepsy.
Why do we sometimes keep eating even when weâre full and other times turn down food completely? Why do we crave salty things at certain times, and sweets at other times? The answers, according to new neuroscience research at the University of Delaware, may lie in a tiny brain in an organism you might not expect.
Lisha Shao, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, has uncovered a neural network in the brains of fruit flies that represents a very early step in how the brain decidesâminute by minuteâwhether a specific food is worth eating. The work was published in the journal Current Biology.
âOur goal is to understand how the brain assigns valueâwhy sometimes eating something is rewarding and other times itâs not,â Shao said.
Connectomics has delivered on its promise to map neuronal circuits at scale and at synaptic resolution. In this Review, Helmstaedter describes recent methodological achievements and remaining challenges in synaptic-resolution connectomics while synthesizing expanding connectomic mapping ambitions that include resolving local circuits of larger brains and screening of connectomes.
A parasite that lives permanently in the brains of millions may not be as uniformly dormant as scientists once thought.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) have recently found evidence of low-level T. gondii reactivation in the brains of mice, even during long-term infection.
Today, more than a third of the worldâs human population is infected by Toxoplasma gondii, a brain-invading parasite that reproduces in cats with mice and other animals acting as intermediate hosts.
