Fascinating case study on the neuroprotective effects of a mutant reelin allele (RELN–COLBOS) which delayed disease progression in a patient with autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease (ADAD). A promising therapeutic target!
Case report of an individual heterozygous for a rare RELN–COLBOS variant that confers resilience, via a gain-of-function mechanism, to Alzheimer’s disease.
A new study from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has uncovered how one of the most common genetic alterations in glioma rewires the cancer cell genome to fuel tumor progression, suggesting a potential new therapeutic strategy for patients with ATRX-mutant gliomas.
The findings show that mutations in the ATRX gene fundamentally reprogram the epigenome and change the three-dimensional structure of chromatin, creating new interactions that activate developmental programs that tumors exploit to grow and spread. Targeting one of the genes downstream of ATRX in preclinical models—particularly in the HOXA family—slowed cancer progression.
The study, published in Nucleic Acids Research, was co-led by Jason Huse, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Anatomic Pathology, and Kunal Rai, Ph.D., professor of Genomic Medicine, with major contributions from Prit Benny Malgulwar, Ph.D., instructor of Translational Molecular Pathology, Anand Singh, Ph.D., senior research scientist in Genomic Medicine, and Ajay Saw, Ph.D., previous postdoctoral fellow in Genomic Medicine.
The severe and aggressive autoimmune disease known as neuromyelitis optica (NMO) just met a new match.
Without treatment, NMO can lead to serious disability, as rogue antibodies (AQP4-IgG) destroy the astrocyte support cells in the brain and spinal cord.
Therapies do exist to manage the condition, but they’re expensive, not always effective, and come with risks of their own – and relapses are common.
The Neuroscience of Patriotism: From “Them” to “Us”
On the 4th of July, patriotism is often framed as flags, fireworks, and national pride. But neuroscience suggests something deeper: shared national identity can actually reshape how the brain processes other people.
A 2026 fMRI study published in PNAS found that when people were briefly reminded of a shared national identity, their brains began responding more inclusively to faces from ethnic outgroups.
The key region was the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area involved in self-referential and social processing. Under ethnic identity cues, this region responded more strongly to ethnic ingroup faces. But under national identity cues, it showed increased engagement toward ethnic outgroup faces too.
In other words, the brain’s sense of “us” is flexible.
The study did not show that ethnic identity disappears. Instead, it suggests that shared identity can partially expand the boundary of belonging while still allowing subgroup identities to remain intact.
That may be one of the healthier forms of patriotism: not “my group above yours,” but “a larger we.”
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic researchers have created a detailed map of the pulvinar, a deep brain region that could help doctors more precisely target brain stimulation therapies for people with drug-resistant epilepsy. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, reveal that brain regions separated by only a few millimeters connect to entirely different
According to the Cleveland Clinic, a quarter of cancer deaths can be attributed to one source: cachexia. Cachexia is a syndrome that accompanies underlying chronic illness and causes unwanted muscle and fat loss, reducing quality of life and sometimes even limiting treatment options.
A new study led by Thales Papagiannakopoulos, Ph.D., an incoming Salk professor, published in Science, points to a potential new target for preventing cachexia.
The researchers found that a common genetic subset of lung cancer is more prone to cachexia and that tumors from this subtype talk to the brain through sensory neurons in the lung. Silencing these sensory nerves to disrupt the tumor-to-brain connection reduced cachexia, as did blocking the production of the lipid signaling molecule prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) through dietary changes.
Information continuously flows between regions of the human brain, forming patterns that shift across states of consciousness, cognitive modes, and neuropsychiatric conditions. While functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals large-scale activity changes over seconds, the electrophysiological dynamics governing sub-second reconfiguration remain poorly understood. Here, relative phase analysis (RPA), a method leveraging phase lead/lag relationships, is introduced to capture whole-brain dynamics with millisecond precision in real time from electroencephalography (EEG). RPA reveals sub-second alternations, occurring approximately every 200 ms, between two dominant modes of information flow: a top-down mode, where anterior regions drive posterior activity, and a bottom-up mode, characterized by reverse directionality. These dynamics are most prominent during wakefulness, gradually diminish under anesthesia, and exhibit pathological imbalance in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Simultaneous EEG-fMRI recordings demonstrate that top-down dynamics coincide with increased activity of higher-order cognitive networks, whereas bottom-up dynamics correspond to heightened activity in sensory networks. A connectome-based coupled-oscillator model reproduces these transitions, indicating that sub-second fluctuations emerge naturally from inter-regional interactions shaped by underlying structural connectivity. This study establishes RPA as a framework for tracking whole-brain dynamics precisely in real time and identifies sub-second top-down/bottom-up alternations as a fundamental organizing principle of human brain function and consciousness.
Keywords: ADHD; Kuramoto model; cortical traveling waves; coupled-oscillator model; general anesthesia; human brain dynamics; relative phase analysis; simultaneous EEG-fMRI; sub-second transitions; top-down versus bottom-up modes.
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