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Category: neuroscience – Page 4

Spontaneous changes in brain state influence the readiness to form memories, neuroscientists find

Most everyday moments are quickly forgotten, while others stay with us for a lifetime. How the brain determines which memories are retained and which are lost remains an open question.

A neuroscience team at the University of Tübingen, led by Professor Andrea Burgalossi of the Institute of Neurobiology and the Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN), has found that spontaneous fluctuations in the brain’s internal state influence how ready the memory system is to store new information. The new study has been published in Nature Communications.

The researchers used mice to investigate the neural mechanisms of memory formation, focusing on the hippocampus, a region of the brain known to be essential to the formation of episodic memories. The hippocampus of mammals, including mice and humans, contains neurons called place cells that represent experiences in the brain.

A single dose reversed autism-like symptoms in adult mice within hours

Even mild inflammation during pregnancy led mouse offspring to develop persistent brain overactivity, sensory sensitivity, repetitive behaviors, and increased seizure risk. Remarkably, one dose of rapamycin improved nearly all of these problems within about two hours. The benefits were temporary, but they suggest that adult brain circuits may remain far more adaptable than previously believed.

Mapping the neuronal building blocks of human language with language models

Together, these findings provide one of the clearest views yet of the brain’s microscopic “language circuitry.” Rather than language emerging from a single language center, it appears to arise from vast networks of specialized neurons working together across multiple scales—from individual cells, to local neural populations, to entire brain regions.

Wide-scale recordings reveal neurons in the human brain that encode fundamental components of language such as the grammatical relationships between words, their parts of speech and the higher-order syntactic structure of phrases and sentences.

Aspirin reverses diet-driven depression-like behavior in mice

Depression is among the most common psychiatric disorders, estimated to affect between 280 million and 332 million people worldwide. This disorder is characterized by persistent sadness and hopelessness, low energy, a loss of interest in everyday activities and sometimes changes in appetite or sleep.

Several factors can contribute to the onset of depression, including genetics, chronic stress, traumatic or challenging life events and biochemical imbalances in the brain. Recent studies suggest that people’s diets can also sometimes influence their mental health and may play a role in the emergence of depressive symptoms.

Some research findings suggest that the long-term consumption of foods rich in fat is linked to an increased risk of depression. The biological processes underpinning this relationship, however, have not yet been clearly elucidated.

Scientists found three gene variants that may change when Alzheimer’s begins

One of the strongest findings involved a variant in CCNG1, which was associated with an earlier age of dementia onset. Carriers of the risk allele developed dementia roughly a decade earlier than those without it.

The same variant was also linked to higher levels of TDP-43, a protein implicated in several neurodegenerative diseases, and signs of accelerated brain aging on MRI scans.

The researchers also found that a variant in RHOJ was associated with biological markers of more severe Alzheimer’s disease. Individuals carrying the risk allele had higher levels of total tau and phosphorylated tau 181 in cerebrospinal fluid and a lower Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio—changes commonly associated with Alzheimer’s pathology.

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