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Category: neuroscience – Page 29

Brain scans reveal action-based organization in people born without hands

Conventional wisdom among neuroscientists suggests that the brain’s motor functions are organized around the body, meaning certain brain areas control the hand; others the foot. An emerging alternative theory is that parts of the brain may be organized by the types of action, like reaching or using tools, no matter which body part is used to complete the task.

Researchers at Georgetown University recently set out to understand these theories, because knowing how the brain is organized around function versus body part has profound implications for rehabilitation and a person’s return to function following a .

The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The work is titled “Action-type mapping principles extend beyond evolutionarily-conserved actions, even in people born without hands.”

Hight-salt diet sparks brain inflammation that could explain stubborn high blood pressure

A new study finds that a high-salt diet triggers brain inflammation that drives up blood pressure. The research, led by McGill University scientist Masha Prager-Khoutorsky in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team at McGill and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center, suggests the brain may be a missing link in certain forms of high blood pressure—or hypertension—traditionally attributed to the kidneys.

“This is new evidence that high blood pressure can originate in the brain, opening the door for developing treatments that act on the brain,” said Prager-Khoutorsky, associate professor in McGill’s Department of Physiology.

Hypertension affects two-thirds of people over 60 and contributes to 10 million deaths worldwide each year. Often symptomless, the condition increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and other serious health problems.

Gut Neurons Direct Immune Healing After Inflammation

Their previous work revealed that ILC2s are a major source of a tissue-healing growth factor called amphiregulin and have the capacity to receive neuronal signals that modulate their function and can impact disease progression and recovery.

In the new study, they demonstrated that the tissue-protective function of ILC2s depends on production of a molecule called adrenomedullin 2 (ADM2) from the enteric nervous system; administering the molecule expanded this group of ILC2s and provided therapeutic benefit in a preclinical model of inflammatory bowel disease, whereas loss of ADM2 signaling exacerbated disease due to the lack of these protective cells.

An alphabet for hand actions in the human brain

Using a corkscrew, writing a letter with a pen or unlocking a door by turning a key are actions that seem simple but actually require a complex orchestration of precise movements. So, how does the brain do it?

According to a new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Coimbra, the has a specialized system that builds these actions in a surprisingly systematic way.

Analogous to how all of the words in a language can be created by recombining the letters of its alphabet, the full repertoire of human hand actions can be built out of a small number of basic building block movements.

Identifying a compass in the human brain

Zhengang Lu and Russell Epstein, from the University of Pennsylvania, led a study to explore how people maintain their sense of direction while navigating naturalistic, virtual reality cities.

As reported in their JNeurosci paper, the researchers collected neuroimaging data while 15 participants performed a taxi-driving task in a virtual reality city. Two represented a forward-facing direction as people moved around. This was consistent across variations of the city with different visual features.

The signal was also consistent across different phases of the task (i.e., picking up a passenger versus driving a passenger to their drop-off location) and various locations in the city. Additional analyses suggest that these brain regions represent a broad range of facing directions by keeping track of direction relative to the north–south axis of the environment.

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