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Researchers at Uppsala university have developed a new method to find mutations in brain tumors in children. They also showed that the mutations change how cancer cells respond to a cancer drug. These findings could lead to better diagnostics and more individualized treatment of children with brain tumors. The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Medulloblastoma is the most common malignant brain tumor in children. It usually develops in the cerebellum and although modern treatment has improved the prognosis so that more than 70% of patients now live more than five years, not all patients can be cured. The aggressive cancer treatment also causes severe side effects such as balance problems and impaired learning abilities in cancer survivors.

Numerous studies have explored the less than 2% of human DNA that gives rise to proteins, and much less is known about the rest of the genome. In a cancer, such as medulloblastoma, 98% of the mutations thus occur in the less studied part of the genome. There could be thousands of mutations, and it is difficult to separate the ones driving the cancer from those without importance.

An important objective of medical research is to identify the underlying molecular mechanisms of human brain health and diseases.

This objective has been predominantly achieved through observational studies of gene expression in human brain tissues obtained from post-mortem brain donors for their analysis. Importantly, many of these studies are based on the assumption that gene expression in the post-mortem human brain is an exact representation of gene expression in the living human brain.

A recent study published on the medRxiv preprint server challenges this assumption by comparing human prefrontal cortex gene expression between living and post-mortem samples.

A recent study posted to the medRxiv preprint server investigates the association between the circulating proteome and brain health.

Study: The circulating proteome and brain health: Mendelian randomisation and cross-sectional analyses. Image Credit: Abduramanova Elena / Shutterstock.com.

*Important notice: medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.

A new robotic headgear allows mice to move freely while being attached to heavy and cumbersome brain-recording machinery, allowing scientists to track their brain activity in motion, according to a new report by Spectrum published on Thursday. The development could have major implications in neuropathy and other sciences of the brain.

Under normal circumstances, researchers analyze brain activity in an awake mouse by fixing the animal’s head in a stiff unmovable position beneath a microscope. This however severely limits the mouse’s range of motion and therefore does not produce accurate results.

As Ted Abel, chair of neuroscience and pharmacology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who was not involved in the study, explained to Spectrum, this approach is not conducive to usable outcomes.

Still a big maybe but it gives them other ideas/possibilities. Hopefully they succeed soon! My mother has glaucoma. It’ll probably be decades before this cure happens though. Unless it can be accelerated which is predicted by Ray Kurzweil in his book The Singularity is Near. I think other futurists have said similar things though I’m not familiar with all of them, I saw a talk by one for NASA.

In efforts to tackle the leading cause of blindness in developed countries, researchers have recruited nanotechnology to help regrow retinal cells.

Macular degeneration is a form of central vision loss, which has massive social, mobility, and mental consequences. It impacts hundreds of millions of people globally and is increasing in prevalence.

Continue reading “Scientists Regrow Retinal Cells in The Lab Using Nanotechnology” »

Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter that can provide an intense feeling of reward. It has been a long-standing assumption that most, if not all, dopamine neurons solely respond to rewards or reward-predicting cues. However, a study in mice led by researchers at Northwestern University reveals dopamine may also control movements. The researchers uncovered that one genetic subtype fires when the body moves and that these neurons do not respond to rewards at all.

The findings are published in Nature Neuroscience in an article titled, “Unique functional responses differentially map onto genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons,” and shed new light on the brain which may lead to new research on Parkinson’s disease, which is characterized by the loss of dopamine neurons yet affects the motor system.

“Dopamine neurons are characterized by their response to unexpected rewards, but they also fire during movement and aversive stimuli,” the researchers wrote. “Dopamine neuron diversity has been observed based on molecular expression profiles; however, whether different functions map onto such genetic subtypes remains unclear. In this study, we established that three genetic dopamine subtypes within the substantia nigra pars compacta, characterized by the expression of Slc17a6 (Vglut2), Calb1, and Anxa1, each have a unique set of responses to rewards, aversive stimuli, and accelerations and decelerations, and these signaling patterns are highly correlated between somas and axons within subtypes.”

The device was equipped with infrared technology.

A police drone equipped with infrared capabilities has risen as a hero in the search for a missing person with dementia that disappeared from a Delta hospital on July 29. Delta is a city located in British Columbia, Canada.

This is according to a report by Global News published on Wednesday.

Continue reading “Police use drone to find missing person with dementia” »

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) researchers have developed an experimental brain cancer treatment that not only cured 100% of mice that received it, but also trained their immune systems to fight future cancers.

The challenge: Glioblastoma is a rare but aggressive type of brain cancer — only 5% of patients live for more than five years after they’re diagnosed, and the average survival time is just 12–18 months. It is considered the deadliest kind of cancer.

Continue reading “New gel destroys brain cancer in 100% of treated mice” »

The cognition needed to support cooperation in its multifaceted forms varies in different scenarios. In this Review, Melis and Raihani argue that whether individuals must recognize interaction partners and whether cooperative interactions need investment repayment can differentiate the cognitive demand posed.