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Category: neuroscience – Page 25

Preventing overhydration: Study uncovers a neural circuit that prompts mice to stop drinking

Identifying the neural mechanisms that support the regulation of vital physiological processes, such as drinking, eating and sleeping, is a long-standing goal within the neuroscience research community. As the disruption of these processes can severely impact people’s health and everyday functioning, uncovering their neural and biological underpinnings is of the utmost importance.

New insights gathered by neuroscientists could ultimately inform the development of more effective interventions designed to regulate vital physiological processes. Thirst and hunger are known to be regulated by homeostatic processes, biological processes that allow the body to maintain internal stability.

Yet behavior can also be anticipatory, which means that animals and humans often adjust their actions (i.e., stop drinking) before the concentration of substances in the blood changes in response to drinking water. The mechanisms through which the brain predicts when it is the right time to stop drinking remain poorly understood.

New Alzheimer’s Treatment Clears Plaques From Brains of Mice Within Hours

Scientists have repaired a natural gateway into the brains of mice, allowing the clumps and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease to be swept away.

After just three drug injections, mice with certain genes that mimic Alzheimer’s showed a reversal of several key pathological features.

Within hours of the first injection, the animal brains showed a nearly 45 percent reduction in clumps of amyloid-beta plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

Discovery of brain parasite’s unique control protein offers hope for better toxoplasmosis treatments

Rajshekhar Gaji was staring at something that should not exist. Under his microscope, parasites that should have been thriving were instead dying—completely unable to survive without a protein his lab had managed to switch off.

“It was an amazing day,” said Gaji, assistant professor of parasitology at the Virginia–Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. That moment of discovery could eventually help the 40 million Americans walking around with a microscopic parasite permanently residing in their brains.

The findings are published in the journal mSphere.

Living brain tissue reveals unique RNA and protein patterns missed in postmortem studies

Two new research papers from the Living Brain Project at Mount Sinai present what is, by several metrics, the largest investigation ever performed of the biology of the living human brain. The papers present unequivocal evidence that brain tissue from living people has a distinct molecular character, an observation that until now was missed because brain tissue from living people is rarely studied.

The findings, which were recently published in Molecular Psychiatry and PLOS ONE, call for a re-evaluation of how scientists study the human brain.

Postmortem brain samples—tissue samples obtained from individuals who donate their brain to science after death—are currently the standard tissue source used by scientists to study how our brains work at the deepest level.

‘Jump-scare’ science: Study elucidates how the brain responds to fear

In haunted houses across the country this month, threatening figures will jump out of the shadows, prompting visitors—wide-eyed and heart racing—to instinctively freeze and flee.

Evolutionarily speaking, this “innate response” is key to survival, helping a wide variety of animal species escape predators. But when stuck in overdrive it can cause problems for humans.

A University of Colorado Boulder research team has identified a novel brain circuit responsible for orchestrating this threat response. Known as the interpeduncular nucleus (IPN), this dense cluster of specialized neurons not only jump-starts that freeze-and-flee reaction, but dials it down when animals learn there’s no real danger.

Researchers pioneer fluid-based laser scanning for brain imaging

When Darwin Quiroz first started working with optics as an undergraduate, he was developing atomic magnetometers. That experience sparked a growing curiosity about how light interacts with matter, an interest that has now led him to a new technique in optical imaging.

Quiroz, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, is co-first author of a new study that demonstrates how a fluid-based known as an electrowetting prism can be used to steer lasers at high speeds for advanced imaging applications.

The work, published in Optics Express, conducted along with mechanical engineering Ph.D. graduate Eduardo Miscles and Mo Zohrabi, senior research associate, opens the door to new technologies in microscopy, LiDAR, optical communications and even brain imaging.

Acoustically activatable liposomes as a translational nanotechnology for site-targeted drug delivery and noninvasive neuromodulation

Purohit et al. incorporate sucrose into drug-loaded lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulations, which shifts the acoustic impedance in a way that triggers drug release upon exposure to focused ultrasound (FUS). By using FUS to both transiently open the blood-brain-barrier and to release drugs from their LNPs, various drugs were delivered into the brains of mice.

Acoustically activatable nanocarriers made by incorporating 5% sucrose into liposomes release drug with low-intensity ultrasound, providing a readily clinically translatable system for both central and peripheral noninvasive neuromodulation.

Bioreducible Gene Delivery Platform that Promotes Intracellular Payload Release and Widespread Brain DispersionClick to copy article linkArticle link copied!

We here introduce a novel bioreducible polymer-based gene delivery platform enabling widespread transgene expression in multiple brain regions with therapeutic relevance following intracranial convection-enhanced delivery. Our bioreducible nanoparticles provide markedly enhanced gene delivery efficacy in vitro and in vivo compared to nonbiodegradable nanoparticles primarily due to the ability to release gene payloads preferentially inside cells. Remarkably, our platform exhibits competitive gene delivery efficacy in a neuron-rich brain region compared to a viral vector under previous and current clinical investigations with demonstrated positive outcomes. Thus, our platform may serve as an attractive alternative for the intracranial gene therapy of neurological disorders.

Why our brain agrees on what we see: New study reveals shared neural structure behind common perceptions

How is it that we all see the world in a similar way? Imagine sitting with a friend in a café, both of you looking at a phone screen displaying a dog running along the beach. Although each of our brains is a world unto itself, made up of billions of neurons with completely different connections and unique activity patterns, you would both describe it as: “A dog on the beach.” How can two such different brains lead to the same perception of the world?

A joint research team from Reichman University and the Weizmann Institute of Science investigated how people with differently wired brains can still perceive the world in strikingly similar ways. Every image we see and every sound we hear is encoded in the brain through the activation of tiny processing units called — that are ten times smaller than a human hair. The human brain contains 85 billion interconnecting neurons that enable us to experience the world, think, and respond to it.

The question that has intrigued brain researchers for years is how this encoding is performed, and how it is possible for two people to have completely different neural codes, yet, end up with similar perceptions?

SCP-239: The Child Who Can Rewrite Reality | The Science and Ethics of a Sleeping God

Can a child’s imagination alter the laws of physics? In this speculative science essay, we explore SCP-239, “The Witch Child” — a sleeping eight-year-old whose mind can reshape matter, rewrite probability, and collapse reality itself.

We examine how the SCP Foundation’s containment procedures—from telekill alloys to induced comas—reflect humanity’s struggle to contain a consciousness powerful enough to bend the universe. Through philosophy, ethics, and quantum speculation, this essay asks:
What happens when belief becomes a force of nature?

🎓 About the Series.
This video is part of our Speculative Science series, where we analyze anomalous phenomena through physics, cognitive science, and ethics.

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💬 Share your theories in the comments below:
Should SCP-239 remain asleep forever, or does humanity have a moral duty to understand her?

#SCP239 #SpeculativeScience #TheWitchChild #SCPFoundation #ScienceFiction #Philosophy #AIExplained #Ethics #SciFiEssay #LoreExplained

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