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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1036

University of Maryland psychiatrist Polymnia Georgiou and colleagues accidentally came across an unexpected example of researchers unwittingly skewing a study’s results when their laboratory mice’s reactions to ketamine differed depending on the sex of the humans who administered the drug.

To check it wasn’t just a weird fluke, they did a blinded, randomized trial with an even mix of male and female experimenters. The mice indeed had a greater antidepressant response to ketamine when handled by male humans.

Obviously, the presence of male humans does not somehow change the properties of ketamine, so the researchers probed deeper to confirm the exact mechanism.

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When our eyes move during REM sleep, we’re looking at things in the dream world our brains have created, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The findings shed light not only on how we dream, but also on how our imaginations work.

REM sleep, which is named for the rapid eye movements associated with it, has been known since the 1950s to be the phase of sleep when dreams occur. But the purpose of the eye movements has remained a matter of much mystery and debate.

REM sleep first occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep. Your eyes rapidly move from side to side behind closed eyelids. Mixed frequency brain wave activity becomes closer to that seen in wakefulness. Your breathing becomes faster and irregular, and your heart rate and blood pressure increase to near waking levels. Although some can also occur in non-REM sleep, most of your dreaming occurs during REM sleep. Your arm and leg muscles become temporarily paralyzed, which prevents you from acting out your dreams. You sleep less of your time in REM sleep as you age.

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It is long-established that innervation-dependent production of neurotrophic factors is required for blastema formation and epimorphic regeneration of appendages in fish and amphibians. The regenerating mouse digit tip and the human fingertip are mammalian models for epimorphic regeneration, and limb denervation in mice inhibits this response. A complicating issue of limb denervation studies in terrestrial vertebrates is that the experimental models also cause severe paralysis therefore impairing appendage use and diminishing mechanical loading of the denervated tissues. Thus, it is unclear whether the limb denervation impairs regeneration via loss of neurotrophic signaling or loss of mechanical load, or both. Herein, we developed a novel surgical procedure in which individual digits were specifically denervated without impairing ambulation and mechanical loading. We demonstrate that digit specific denervation does not inhibit but attenuates digit tip regeneration, in part due to a delay in wound healing. However, treating denervated digits with a wound dressing that enhances closure results in a partial rescue of the regeneration response. Contrary to the current understanding of mammalian epimorphic regeneration, these studies demonstrate that mouse digit tip regeneration is not peripheral nerve dependent, an observation that should inform continued mammalian regenerative medicine approaches.

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Ken Muneoka has a history of shaking up the field of regeneration; for instance, in a 2019 groundbreaking article published in Nature, the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS) professor proved the possibility of joint regeneration in mammals for the first time.

His team is already questioning further long-held notions about the underlying science of the subject, this time in relation to how mammals might regenerate damaged parts of the body.

Only some organs, like the liver, and certain tissues, like the epidermis, the top layer of skin, can naturally regenerate in humans.

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Summary: A new mouse study provides clues as to how the brain processes sensory information from internal organs, revealing feedback from organs activates different clusters of neurons in the brain stem.

Source: Harvard.

Most of us think little of why we feel pleasantly full after eating a big holiday meal, why we start to cough after accidentally inhaling campfire smoke, or why we are hit with sudden nausea after ingesting something toxic. However, such sensations are crucial for survival: they tell us what our bodies need at any given moment so that we can quickly adjust our behavior.

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One of the greatest challenges in the field of neurology and intensive care medicine is correctly diagnosing the level of consciousness of a patient in coma due to severe brain injury. Scientists of the Human Brain Project (HBP) now have explored new techniques that may pave the way to better tell apart two different neurological conditions.

Their findings, published in the journal eLife, reveal important information on the mechanisms of disorders of consciousness.

The team of researchers from University of Liège, GIGA Consciousness Research Unit and Coma Science Group and CHU de Liège (Belgium), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), and others, assessed brain functional network states as a marker of consciousness to potentially distinguish patients in the unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS).

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