Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: neuroscience – Page 286

Parkinson’s drug reduces symptoms in treatment-resistant depression, clinical trial finds

A drug used for Parkinson’s disease has been shown to be effective in reducing the symptoms of difficult to treat depression, according to a study led by the University of Oxford.

In the largest clinical trial to date, pramipexole was found to be substantially more effective than a placebo at reducing the symptoms of (TRD) over the course of nearly a year, when added to ongoing antidepressant medication.

The trial, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, included 150 patients with treatment-resistant depression, with equal numbers receiving 48 weeks of pramipexole or a placebo, alongside ongoing antidepressant medication.

Individual neurons in amygdala and hippocampus encode visual features that help recognize faces, study finds

Humans are innately capable of recognizing other people they have seen before. This capability ultimately allows them to build meaningful social connections, develop their sense of identity, better cooperate with others, and identify individuals who could pose a risk to their safety.

Several past studies rooted in neuroscience, psychology and have tried to shed light on the neural processes underlying the ability to encode other people’s identities. Most findings collected so far suggest that the identity of others is encoded by neurons in the and hippocampus, two known to support the processing of emotions and the encoding of memories, respectively.

Based on evidence collected in the past, researchers have concluded that neurons in these two brain regions respond in specific ways when we meet a person we are acquainted with, irrespective of visual features (i.e., how their face looks). A recent paper published in Nature Human Behaviour, however, suggests that this might not be the case, and that in the amygdala encode and represent , ultimately supporting the identification of others.

Saturday Citations: Upside-down sharks; brain network functioning in psychopaths; IQ associated with better predictions

This week, biologists discovered a new cellular organelle that’s like “a new recycling center within the cell.” Wild-growing tomatoes in the Galápagos are de-evolving. And geologists at the University of Southampton detected deep Earth pulses beneath Africa. Plus: Brain network functionality differs in people with psychopathic personality; sharks have a surprising vulnerability; and people with the highest measured IQ make better probabilistic predictions than people with the lowest IQ.

Cancer cells get power boost by stealing mitochondria from nerves

Cancer cells turbocharge themselves by stealing the energy-producing units from neurons in tumours, scientists report today in Nature 1. This act of thievery seems to give cancer cells a boost to help them survive when they metastasize, or spread to distant organs.

The findings show that cancer cells siphon off neurons’ mitochondria — organelles that generate most of a cell’s energy — through ultrathin tubes that grow between the two types of cell. The purloined mitochondria increase cancer cells’ ability to withstand the stress of shooting through blood vessels during metastasis.

“Now we have a new culprit for metastasis, which means we have a new target to block metastasis,” says study co-author Simon Grelet, a cancer neurobiologist at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. “And metastasis is what make cancers so deadly.”

The theft probably helps the cells to spread around the body, and preventing it could provide a path to treatment, researchers say.

/* */