This systematic review examines structural, functional, neurochemical, and plasticity brain changes associated with social determinants of health in individuals with, or at risk for, schizophrenia-spectrum psychotic conditions.
Category: neuroscience – Page 2
UNM Researchers Find Alarmingly High Levels of Microplastics in Human Brains — and Concentrations are Growing Over Time
Microplastics – tiny bits of degraded polymers that are ubiquitous in our air, water and soil – have lodged themselves throughout the human body, including the liver, kidney, placenta and testes, over the past half century.
Now, University of New Mexico Health Sciences researchers have found microplastics in human brains, and at much higher concentrations than in other organs. Worse, the plastic accumulation appears to be growing over time, having increased by 50% over just the past eight years.
In a new study published in Nature Medicine, a team led by toxicologist Matthew Campen, PhD, Distinguished and Regents’ Professor in the UNM College of Pharmacy, reported that plastic concentrations in the brain appeared higher than in the liver or kidney, and higher than previous reports for placentas and testes.
Neuron-targeted gene therapy rescues multiple phenotypes of STXBP1-related disorders in mice and is well tolerated in nonhuman primates
Aeran and colleagues present research on targeted gene therapy vector engineering and pre-clinical testing of neuron-targeted AAV9-based constructs for STXBP1-related neurodevelopmental and epileptic encephalopathies. Candidate vectors designed to target specific neuronal types and detarget tissues associated with toxicity produced robust phenotypic reversal in Stxbp1 +/− mice and were well tolerated in monkeys.
Analogy as the Core of Cognition
In this Presidential Lecture, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter examines the role and contributions of analogy in cognition, using a variety of analogies to illustrate his points.
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What’s New in Science: Cosmic Surprises, Newton Supreme, A New Collider, and Feynman Dines Out?
I think this was one of my most enjoyable dialogues in our What’s new series. Maybe Sabine and I are getting more used to each other’s cadence and interests or maybe it was the subject matter. Either way, I think you will find this to be a fascinating and provocative discussion of science at the forefront, and at the not-so-forefront, because that science is interesting too! We began our discussion describing a new finding of a Giant Ring of galaxies billions of light years across in the sky. The key questions are: Is it real? And is it surprising? We both have slightly different takes on this. Next we described a new measurement of the strength of gravity on scales from 80 to 800 million light years in distance. And guess what? Gravity falls off just like Newton predicted! This may seem like a big yawn, but one of the most popular models that claims to do away with dark matter would imply that Gravity would fall off differently on these scales. Does this new result kill that idea? Stay tuned. Microsoft, which has cried wolf a number of times so far when it comes to something called Majorana qubits as the basis of a new viable quantum computer just published a new paper claiming they finally have it. Sabine and I discuss why we are both still skeptical, but why the effort is worth it. Next, CERN, the large European particle physics laboratory, and the world particle physics community seem to have converged on plans for building a huge new accelerator in the current CERN site… this time involving an underground ring 91 km in circumference, in which electrons and positrons would collide to explore the detailed properties of the Higgs particle. Is the effort worth it? Again, Sabine and I have slightly different takes on this. Fusion power, which we have talked about in a number of earlier episodes, continues to tempt humanity with the promise of unlimited energy. Many people, myself included, have tended to argue that fusion seems to be 25 years in the future, and may always be 25 years in the future. But many new efforts are underway, so who knows. Unfortunately, a group of economists has analyzed fusion in the context of other large energy programs and have argued that even if we can achieve it, it may not be as economically viable as many claim. Finally, one day Richard Feynman went to a Thai restaurant with his young companion Ralph Leighton, and wondered what he should order. Should it be the same old dish he loved or something new. An equation filled napkin later, and he had the answer. Fifty years later some cognitive scientists resurrected Feynman’s napkin and explained it, and argued it might have important implications in other social situations. Such is the power of science. Consider supporting the podcast and the Origins Project Foundation at https://www.originsproject.org/ To see commercial-free, full HD video episodes, join us at lawrence krauss.substack.com Thank you for your support! iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast… https://TheOriginsPodcast.com Twitter: / theoriginspod Instagram:
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/ theoriginspod The Origins Podcast, a production of The Origins Project Foundation, features in-depth conversations with some of the most interesting people in the world about the issues that impact all of us in the 21st century. Host, theoretical physicist, lecturer, and author, Lawrence M. Krauss, will be joined by guests from a wide range of fields, including science, the arts, and journalism. The topics discussed on The Origins Podcast reflect the full range of the human experience — exploring science and culture in a way that seeks to entertain, educate, and inspire. Full Episodes Playlist:
• Ricky Gervais — The Origins Podcast with L…
Gene tied to energy production in brain could lead to new treatment for cognitive disorders
Researchers in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo have discovered a connection between a specific gene and healthy brain function. “The hope is that this discovery could eventually lead to expanded treatment for psychiatric and neurological disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism,” explains Mikhail V. Pletnikov, MD, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, the senior author of the study with Kateryna (Kate) Murlanova, Ph.D., the first lead author and a research scientist in the department.
They discovered that the NPAS3 gene expressed in astrocytes—the cells that help with brain chemistry—regulates the energy production required to support thinking and memory. NPAS3 is a transcription factor, which means it directs how certain genes work and influences how cells function. Their findings are published in Science Advances.
“Previous studies have linked NPAS3 to conditions involving cognitive problems, such as schizophrenia, but scientists didn’t know exactly how it might be involved,” Pletnikov says.
The Role of Tau Pathology in Alzheimer’s Disease and Down Syndrome
Background: Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit an almost complete penetrance of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology but are underrepresented in clinical trials for AD. The Tau protein is associated with microtubule function in the neuron and is crucial for normal axonal transport. In several different neurodegenerative disorders, Tau misfolding leads to hyper-phosphorylation of Tau (p-Tau), which may seed pathology to bystander cells and spread. This review is focused on current findings regarding p-Tau and its potential to seed pathology as a “prion-like” spreader. It also considers the consequences of p-Tau pathology leading to AD, particularly in individuals with Down syndrome. Methods: Scopus (SC) and PubMed (PM) were searched in English using keywords “tau AND seeding AND brain AND down syndrome”
Moral inconsistency is based on the vmPFC’s insufficient representation across tasks and connectedness
A new Cell Reports study looked at why people sometimes judge others harshly for dishonest behavior while excusing similar behavior in themselves. The researchers call this moral inconsistency: a mismatch between the moral standards someone uses to judge others and the standards they apply to their own behavior. The study used an honesty-versus-profit task, where participants could gain money by being dishonest, and then judged both their own behavior and other people’s behavior.
The main finding was that people who were more morally inconsistent showed weaker involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, or vmPFC, a brain region involved in value-based decision-making, social judgment, emotion regulation, and moral evaluation. In morally consistent participants, the vmPFC seemed to represent moral judgment more similarly across “judging myself” and “judging others.” In morally inconsistent participants, that cross-task representation was weaker, especially when they were making choices for themselves.
Liu. V, et al. find that moral inconsistency arises from a reduced ability of the vmPFC to form a cross-task representation of moral principles and its connectedness during the moral behavior task. This indicates that individuals with higher moral inconsistency consider moral principles less often to guide their own behavior.
Brain enzyme caught doing something unexpected—it builds polysialic acid on itself
A chance discovery at Nagoya University in Japan has shown that a well-known brain enzyme has a hidden ability: It builds a sugar chain on itself, becomes secreted from the cell and deactivates, then switches on outside the cell once the chain is removed. The finding, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, overturns a decades-old assumption about how polysialic acid, a sugar chain critical for brain development and function, is produced and shows a new way an enzyme can regulate its own activity.
The human brain is covered in sugar chains, or glycans, molecular structures that coat cells and regulate how they communicate. One of the most important is polysialic acid, a long chain found mainly in the brain.
Polysialic acid keeps brain cells from adhering too tightly to each other and binds to growth factors and neurotrophins to regulate the presentation of their receptors. Through this, it plays a key role in learning, memory and neural development. Importantly, these sugar chains change rapidly in response to brain activity. The ability to restore them quickly is thought to be essential for normal brain function.