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Summary: Brain mapping study reveals memory engrams are widely distributed throughout the brain, including among regions not previously realized.

Source: picower institute for learning and memory.

A new study by scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT provides the most comprehensive and rigorous evidence yet that the mammalian brain stores a single memory across a widely distributed, functionally connected complex spanning many brain regions, rather than in just one or even a few places.

They could become a useful tool in tracking healthy (and unhealthy) ageing | Science & technology.

“Conscious processing is overestimated,” lead author Michael Herzog said in a press release. “You should give more weight to the dark, unconscious processing period. You just believe that you are conscious at each moment of time.”

When we ride a bike, Herzog mused, our bodies automatically make minute adjustments to keep from falling over without consciously thinking about it. But even with his team’s two-step model, some of the secondary questions surrounding the ancient debate remain. Questions about how long these discrete moments of consciousness last, or how they differ among people, don’t have answers.

“The question for what consciousness is needed and what can be done without conscious? We have no idea,” Herzog said.

An international team of researchers has created a series of brain charts that show how our brains expand rapidly in early life and slowly shrink as we age.

A study published in Molecular Psychiatry is the first to look at multiple levels of biology within women with postpartum depression (PPD) to see how women with the condition differ from those without it. PPD affects 1 in 7 women and has negative mental health consequences for both mother and child. However, the precise biological mechanisms behind the disorder are unknown.

“We don’t have PPD figured out,” said lead author Jerry Guintivano, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UNC Department of Psychiatry. “A lot of biological research focuses on candidate genes and hormones, and we do have a lead on some PPD-specific medications, but it’s important to take multiple avenues to target this condition. Not every manifestation of PPD is the same.”

That’s why Guintivano led a team of researchers from the UNC School of Medicine to conduct the largest transcriptome-wide association study for PPD to date. Previous studies have only analyzed whole blood samples. This study took a deeper look and examined the different components of blood. They took blood samples from 1,500 racially and ethnically diverse women from across North Carolina who had given birth within the past six weeks, 482 of whom were diagnosed with PPD. Researchers used RNA sequencing, DNA genotyping, and assessment of DNA methylation—amounting to three levels of basic biology evaluation—to look for differences in components of the blood samples from women with PPD versus women without PPD.

A study of more than 120,000 brain scans shows rapid growth before age 2 and accelerating decline after age 50. The results may one day help pick up abnormalities in the developing brain.

Genentech’s Gregory Rippon, M.D., associates a few different phrases with the challenging nature of Alzheimer’s disease drug development: “cautious optimism,” “steady progress,” “an exercise in per | Genentech has been working on gantenerumab for 20 years, and, while it’s tempting to try to rush the clinical process, the Roche unit is slowly but surely following the evidence.

CMS officials disagree with the FDA’s reasoning, and are likely worried about the cost of covering a medication for hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries who might seek the treatment if it was broadly covered by Medicare. While CMS’s concern for taxpayers is understandable, it’s the FDA — not CMS — that has the statutory authority and deep medical expertise to assess a drug for approval. And Aduhelm passed the FDA’s assessment.

CMS arguably overstepped the bounds of its authority. Its decision is a huge blow to millions of Americans living with Alzheimer’s and their families. They are the losers in CMS’s decision, not only from the severe restriction on access to Aduhelm but also from its chilling effect on the development of other disease-modifying agents for people with Alzheimer’s. If CMS won’t pay for a treatment after the FDA legally approves it, why should a company bother pursuing this pathway?

CMS’s decision will affect the exploration for new treatments for Alzheimer’s for years, just at the time when new drugs appear to be making progress against this terrible disease.

Patients who suffer from frontotemporal dementia with extrapyramidal symptoms have brainstem atrophy and reduced metabolic activity in specific brain regions compared to those with FTD without extrapyramidal symptoms.