The first recorded brain activity of a person during their death suggests a biological trigger for near-death experiences.
Category: neuroscience – Page 459
A mechanism has been discovered that regulates cellular levels of tau, a protein whose aberrant accumulation is at the root of tauopathies, a class of devastating neurodegenerative diseases.
The finding was discovered in the laboratory of Michel Cayouette, director of cellular neurobiology research at the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) and a medical professor at the University of Montreal.
The research, which was recently published in the journal Science Advances, demonstrates how the protein known as ‘numb’ regulates intracellular tau levels, making numb a potential therapeutic agent for tauopathies.
“There are no hard limits imposed by biology or by physics that says that we can’t live better longer,” Kristen Fortney, CEO of San Francisco-based BioAge Labs, told the outlet. Focused on discerning the markers of aging, BioAge Labs is using large amounts of biobank blood and tissue samples to do so.
The company has already found a drug target that slows aging-linked muscle loss in mice.
“There is a protein called apelin that circulates in the blood, and we saw that middle-aged people with higher levels of apelin in their blood were living longer, with better muscle function and better cognitive function as they age,” Fortney said, according to Express.
A new study in an animal model of aging indicates a potential reason for why women who have early menopause or other genetic conditions affecting the reproductive system are more prone to develop cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dementia.
The new study, led by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC and published in the journal Aging Cell, found that disrupting a process called meiosis in C. elegans reproductive cells caused a decline in the worms’ health and triggered an accelerated aging gene signature similar to that of aging humans.
“This study is exciting because it’s the first direct evidence that manipulating the health of reproductive cells leads to premature aging and a decline in healthspan,” said senior author Arjumand Ghazi, Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics, developmental biology, and cell biology and physiology at Pitt and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. “The implications of this finding are profound: It suggests that the status of the reproductive system is important not simply to produce children, but also for overall health.”
Identification of molecularly defined gut-to-brain and downstream brain circuits participating in nausea and retching induced by enterotoxins and chemotherapeutic drugs in mice suggests that food poisoning and chemotherapy recruit similar circuit modules to initiate defensive responses.
According to an article by the university, the study is significant because it is a sign of future viability for noninvasive technology to help those with limited motor function.
“We demonstrated that the people who will actually be the end users of these types of devices are able to navigate in a natural environment with the assistance of a brain-machine interface,” said José del R. Millán, professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and leader of the international research team.
People affected by the lethal glioblastoma cancer only live for 12–18 months after diagnosis.
A global trial that began in 2007 has confirmed that a vaccine for the treatment of the most lethal brain cancer can give patients years of extended life.
Glioblastoma is not only the most common form of brain cancer but is also one of the deadliest. People affected by the disease only live just 12–18 months after the diagnosis, or even less.
Now, thanks to the vaccine DCVax, some 2,500 people who are diagnosed with deadly cancer in the UK could be benefitted.
This Week in The Journal
Posted in neuroscience
Kazuaki Ikeda, Masaki Kataoka, and Nobuaki K. Tanaka.
(see pages 8621–8628)
Current flowing through the plasma membrane of individual neurons causes fluctuations in the surrounding electrical field that can be detected with extracellular electrodes. Changes in the local field potential can influence the activity of all neurons within that field. For example, when two unmyelinated axons are closely apposed, an action potential in one axon alters the membrane potential of the other. This phenomenon is called ephaptic signaling. Ephaptic signaling is most prominent in layered neural structures in which numerous similarly oriented neurons are synchronously active. In fact, ephaptic signaling is thought to promote synchronous firing of cerebellar Purkinje cells and cortical and hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Ikeda et al. now show that ephaptic signaling originating in Drosophila eyes can influence activity in olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) in the antennae.