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Category: neuroscience – Page 368

Understanding the role of a new enzyme in the development of autism spectrum disorder

Over the past decades, scientists have made substantial progress unveiling the underlying mechanisms behind many psychiatric disorders. Every year, new genetic mutations or protein dysregulations are identified as potential culprits for the symptoms and sometimes even the root causes of complex neurological diseases, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s.

Despite these efforts, the precise roles of several proteins involved in remain obscure. Such is the case for indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 2 (IDO2), an enzyme expressed in the brain and metabolized by the tryptophan–kynurenine pathway (TKP).

Changes in the metabolites of this pathway have already been linked to many , and genetically modified mice have been invaluable tools in such studies. However, the detailed functions of IDO2 in the brain are not known.

Cognitive maps in some brain regions are compressed during goal-seeking decision-making

Human decision-making has been the focus of a wide range of research studies. Collectively, these research efforts could help to understand better how people make different types of everyday choices while also shedding light on the neural processes underpinning these choices.

Findings suggest that while making instantaneous decisions, or in other words, choices that need to be made quickly based on the information available at a given moment, humans greatly rely on contextual information. This contextual information can also guide so-called sequential decisions, which entails making a choice after observing the sequential unfolding of a process.

Researchers at the University of Oxford, the National Research Council in Rome, University College London (UCL), and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development recently carried out a study exploring the impact of context on goal-directed decision-making. Their findings, published in Neuron, suggest that goal-seeking ‘compresses’ spatial maps in the hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortices in the brain.

Scientists Have Decoded the Mechanism of How Synapses Are Formed

Whether in the brain or in the muscles, synapses are present wherever nerve cells exist. Synapses, the connections between neurons, are fundamental to the process of excitation transmission, which is essentially communication between neurons. As in any communication process, there is a sender and a receiver: Nerve cell processes called axons generate and transmit electrical signals thereby acting as signal senders.

Synapses are points of contact between axonal nerve terminals (the pre-synapse) and post-synaptic neurons. At these synapses, the electrical impulse is converted into chemical messengers that are received and sensed by the post-synapses of the neighboring neuron. The messengers are released from special membrane sacs called synaptic vesicles.

As well as transmitting information, synapses can also store information. While the structure and function of synapses are comparably well understood, little is known about how they are formed.

Depression’s Link to Cellular Metabolism Unveiled: Blood Tests Can Predict Suicidal Thoughts

University of California, San Diego study suggests new way to personalize mental health care.

Major depressive disorder affects 16.1 million adults in the United States and costs $210 billion annually. While the primary symptoms of depression are psychological, scientists and doctors have come to understand that depression is a complex disease with physical effects throughout the body. For example, measuring markers of cellular metabolism has become an important approach to studying mental illnesses and developing new ways to diagnose, treat, and prevent them.

Study links cellular metabolism with depression.

Six Arguments for Quantum Consciousness, and why you should care

In this introduction to quantum consciousness, Justin Riddle presents six arguments that quantum consciousness is an important theory of mind.\
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To summarize them briefly, People always identify as their latest technology and so most people believe that they are a digital computer. Time to update those models of self, because… Quantum computers are here. We wouldn’t want the brick of metal in our pocket to have greater computational power than our brain. People say the brain is too warm, wet, and noisy for quantum effects; yet, evidence keeps emerging for quantum effects in biology (such as photosynthesis). Where do we draw the line? Evolution might be selecting for quantum systems that can maintain quantum coherence. The debate around the role of quantum mechanics in consciousness has been raging for 100 years. Many key historical figures like Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, von Neumann entertained the idea that quantum mechanics might relate to our mind. Physical theories that are purely deterministic have failed to account for key aspects of subjective experience. There may be novel answers from a perspective that incorporate new physics.\
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0:00 Introduction\
1:26 1. People identify as their latest technology\
4:07 2. Quantum computers are here\
7:30 3. Biology utilizes quantum properties\
12:00 4. Evolution selects for quantum systems\
14:10 5. Historical precedent for quantum consciousness\
16:30 6. Failure of physical theories to explain\
a. Sense of self\
b. Freewill\
c. Meaning\
21:07 Outro\
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#quantum\
#consciousness\
#philosophy\
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Website: www.justinriddlepodcast.com\
Email: [email protected]\
Twitter: @JRiddlePodcast\
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Music licensed from and created by Baylor Odabashian. BandCamp: @UnscrewablePooch\
Painting behind me by Paul Seli. IG: @paul.seli.art\
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Relevant external link:\
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Skin-on-a-chip: Modeling an innervated epidermal-like layer on a microfluidic chip

Year 2023 face_with_colon_three

Bioengineers and tissue engineers intend to reconstruct skin equivalents with physiologically relevant cellular and matrix architectures for basic research and industrial applications. Skin pathophysiology depends on skin-nerve crosstalk and researchers must therefore develop reliable models of skin in the lab to assess selective communications between epidermal keratinocytes and sensory neurons.

In a new report now published in Nature Communications, Jinchul Ahn and a research team in , bio-convergence engineering, and therapeutics and biotechnology in South Korea presented a three-dimensional, innervated epidermal keratinocyte layer on a to create a sensory neuron-epidermal keratinocyte co-culture model. The maintained well-organized basal-suprabasal stratification and enhanced barrier function for physiologically relevant anatomical representation to show the feasibility of imaging in the lab, alongside functional analyses to improve the existing co-culture models. The platform is well-suited for biomedical and pharmaceutical research.

Skin: The largest sensory organ of the human body

Skin is composed of a complex network of sensory nerve fibers to form a highly sensitive organ with mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors and nociceptors. These neuronal subtypes reside in the dorsal root ganglia and are densely and distinctly innervated into the cutaneous layers. Sensory nerve fibers in the skin also express and release nerve mediators including neuropeptides to signal the skin. The biological significance of nerves to sensations and other biological skin functions have formed physical and pathological correlations with several skin diseases, making these instruments apt in vivo models to emulate skin-nerve interactions.

This gel stops brain tumors in mice. Could it offer hope for humans?

Medication delivered by a novel gel cured 100% of mice with an aggressive brain cancer, a striking result that offers new hope for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma, one of the deadliest and most common brain tumors in humans.

Cui’s team combined an anticancer drug and an antibody in a solution that self-assembles into a gel to fill the tiny grooves left after a brain tumor is surgically removed. The gel can reach areas that surgery might miss and current drugs struggle to reach to kill lingering cancer cells and suppress tumor growth. The results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The gel also seems to trigger an immune response that a mouse’s body struggles to activate on its own when fighting glioblastoma. When the researchers rechallenged surviving mice with a new glioblastoma tumor, their immune systems alone beat the cancer without additional medication. The gel appears to not only fend off cancer but help rewire the immune system to discourage recurrence with immunological memory, researchers said.

Still, surgery is essential for this approach, the researchers said. Applying the gel directly in the brain without surgical removal of the tumor resulted in a 50% survival rate.

Study finds previously unidentified genetic mutation in a small protein provides significant protection against Parkinson’s disease

In a recent study published in Molecular Psychiatry, researchers explored the effects of a small humanin-like peptide 2 (SHLP2) variant on mitochondrial function.

Mitochondria are implicated in Parkinson’s disease (PD) pathogenesis. Mitochondrial-derived peptides (MDPs) are microproteins encoded from small open reading frames (sORFs) in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). SHLP2 is an MDP with an essential role in multiple cellular processes, and it improves mitochondrial metabolism by increasing biogenesis and respiration and reducing oxidation.

Recent studies link mitochondrial single nucleotide polymorphisms (mtSNPs) within coding regions of MDPs to age-related deficits. For instance, m.2706 A G, an mtSNP in humanin, predicts reduced circulating levels of humanin and worse cognitive decline. Moreover, another mtSNP, m.2158 T C, is associated with reduced PD risk, albeit the underlying mechanisms are unknown.