The findings could help researchers better understand how people with depression respond to treatment.
Category: neuroscience – Page 4
New Study Reveals a Major Shift Behind Rising ADHD and Autism Diagnoses
A study found that children and adolescents diagnosed there today are more similar to the general population than those diagnosed a decade ago.
As ADHD and autism diagnoses rise in Denmark, the children and adolescents receiving them increasingly resemble the broader population in their birth histories, family backgrounds, and other measured characteristics. A new study suggests that understanding the increase requires looking at how the diagnosed population has changed, alongside possible changes in the underlying risk of developing these conditions.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects attention and impulse control, while autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects social communication and patterns of behavior. The study found that several characteristics historically more common among young people with these diagnoses became less distinctive between 2012 and 2022.
Scientists Discover a Key Reason Why the Aging Eye Struggles To Regrow Lost Neurons
Reducing inflammation partially restored the aging retina’s ability to generate new neurons from support cells, offering a possible route to improve experimental regeneration.
To replace nerve cells lost to glaucoma, researchers are looking to cells already living alongside them. Called glia, these cells support and nourish neurons in the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. The idea is to give them a different job, turning them into new neurons that could replace those lost to disease.
Scientists have managed to do this in young mice. But an approach intended for diseases of aging also needs to work in older tissue. A study from the laboratory of Levi Todd, PhD, at Upstate Medical University found that aging makes that transformation much harder. It also identified a potential way to help, with anti-inflammatory steroids partially restoring the aging retina’s regenerative response.
Biosynthesis of Gold Nanoparticles Using Psilocybe cubensis Extracts and Their Biostimulatory Evaluation in Neuro2a Cells
Green nanotechnology applied to neuroscience offers innovative solutions for the treatment of central nervous system disorders. This study reports on the biosynthesis of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) using extracts from the psilocybin-producing mushroom Psilocybe cubensis and the evaluation of their neurostimulatory potential. The AuNPs were synthesized via the biological reduction of HAuCl₄ and characterized using UV-Vis spectroscopy, TEM, DLS, and FTIR. The physicochemical results confirmed the production of monodisperse spheroidal nanoparticles with an average diameter of 18.94 nm and high colloidal stability (zeta potential: −31.0 mV). FTIR analysis suggested that fungal metabolites constitute the stabilizing organic corona of the nanomaterial. Bioactivity was evaluated in the Neuro2a (N2a) neuronal model using the IncuCyte® real-time monitoring platform and 3D holotomographic microscopy. A dose-dependent hormetic response was identified: concentrations between 22.91 and 183.25 µg/mL induced a significant increase in cell proliferation and viability without morphological compromise, while doses ≥ 733.0 µg/mL resulted in acute cytotoxicity. 3D holotomography confirmed that the biostimulatory treatment (91.63 µg/mL) promotes a phenotype with active cytoplasmic extensions, consistent with early stages of neurite outgrowth. In conclusion, P. cubensis AuNPs constitute a promising nanotherapeutic system with neuroprotective and pro-proliferative capabilities, laying the groundwork for future applications in regenerative medicine and neurorehabilitation.
Gold nanoparticles, Green synthesis, Holotomography, Neuroregeneration, Psilocybe cubensis.
Atlas of the brain’s striatum
A region of the brain called the striatum is critical for many cognitive and motor functions, including decision-making, control of movement, habit formation, and processing of reward. It also plays a role in addiction and is significantly affected by Huntington’s disease, schizophrenia, and other disorders.
In work that could help scientists devise new treatments for those diseases, the researchers have generated a new atlas of the neurons found within the striatum. Using single-cell RNA sequencing and other techniques, they were able to identify 31 subgroups of neurons based on which genes they express.
These groups include neurons that are involved in addiction, depression, and schizophrenia. The researchers also discovered why some neurons of the striatum are more vulnerable to Huntington’s disease. All of these results, the researchers say, could help scientists develop new drugs to combat these conditions.
Human brain is two separate organs, Stanford Medicine-led research finds
“A new study led by Stanford Medicine found the brain is two separate organs adjacent to one another. The finding could aid research into devastating neurological diseases.”
Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study challenges the conventional model in which the entire brain is derived from a single common neural ectoderm progenitor population.
Using lineage-tracing experiments in mouse embryos, researchers found evidence for two parallel neural ectoderm progenitor populations that emerge during gastrulation:
• Anterior neural ectoderm, associated with development of the forebrain and midbrain • Posterior neural ectoderm, associated with development of the hindbrain.
The researchers then modeled these developmental populations using human pluripotent stem cells. The anterior-and posterior-like neural ectoderm populations showed different developmental potentials and distinct chromatin accessibility patterns, suggesting that their future regional identities are established surprisingly early.
Importantly, by reproducing the posterior developmental pathway, the researchers were able to generate electrophysiologically active human hindbrain rhombomere 5/6 motor neurons — a neuronal population that has been difficult to produce in vitro.
That could have practical importance for neuroscience. These cells may provide improved laboratory models for disorders involving hindbrain motor neurons, including spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and potentially improve our ability to investigate human brainstem biology.
Human brain has a split origin, new research suggests
For centuries, scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research led by Stanford Medicine reveals that what we call the brain is two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years.
The discovery overturns a prevailing model of brain development. For decades, researchers have subscribed to the theory that a single progenitor cell early in development gives rise to the entire brain. This model suggested all parts of the brain shared a common developmental origin.
The new findings show that the human brain consists of two ancient nervous systems packaged together—a more primitive part that regulates our hearts’ beating, breathing and other functions, and another that makes us distinctly human, capable of poetry, mathematics and wondering about our own origins.
Computer Scientist Pushes a 1996 Algorithm Beyond Its Longstanding Limit
A new algorithm solves a blind spot that has challenged computer scientists since 1996, improving distance estimates for nearby points in massive networks.
Navigation apps usually solve one route at a time, such as finding the fastest way from a hotel to an airport. Computer scientists face a far larger version of that challenge: calculating the shortest distance between every possible pair of locations in a network.
Known as the All-Pairs Shortest Paths (APSP) problem, this task applies to far more than road maps. A graph can represent computers connected by data links, stations joined by rail lines, proteins interacting inside a cell, or neurons communicating in the brain. The points are called vertices, and the connections between them are edges.
When danger sounds, mice draw closer to familiar companions via a newly identified brain circuit
When mice heard a sound they thought signaled danger, they moved closer to a familiar companion, according to Virginia Tech researchers. They did not do the same when paired with a mouse they didn’t know. The study, led by Alexei Morozov of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and published in Neuropsychopharmacology, begins to reveal how the brain turns a warning signal into a drive to seek familiar company.
Scientists have long observed that animals gather when confronted with immediate threats such as predators. The new study asked whether a learned warning signal could produce a similar response and, if so, which biological mechanisms might be involved.
Researchers first trained mice individually to associate a tone with a short, mild foot shock. One to two days later, they placed the mice in pairs and played the tone again. Mice that had previously lived together drew closer when the tone played, while those paired with strangers showed no consistent change in distance.