A decade-long brain health study has released its full dataset, offering rare longitudinal insights into how cognition and brain structure change across adulthood.
Category: neuroscience – Page 48
T cells take up residence in the healthy brain via a gut-fat-brain axis
The brain is a unique place. It is shielded from much of the body by the blood-brain barrier, meaning it’s protected from pathogens and potentially dangerous substances that might be in our blood. And historically, many scientists believed that separation extended to the immune system as well: the brain has its own specialized immune cells called microglia, but immune cells present in the rest of the body were long thought to steer clear of the brain unless there was a disease or other problem requiring their presence.
Now, a team of scientists from Yale School of Medicine (YSM) has shown that immune cells known as T cells reside in the healthy brains of mice and humans, trafficked there from the gut and fat. This is the first time T cells have been shown to inhabit the brain under normal, non-diseased conditions.
The findings are published in Nature.
Targeted strategy prevents untreatable nerve pain caused by chemotherapy
Published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity—is the first to suggest that a tumor-driving gene known as AEG-1 actively regulates the inflammation responsible for causing chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), a common and painful side effect of cancer treatment. Eliminating the function of this gene using targeted therapies could become a critical strategy for managing a debilitating side effect experienced by many cancer patients.
A new transformer architecture emulates imagination and higher-level human mental states
The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and the study of neurobiological processes are deeply interlinked, as a deeper understanding of the former can yield valuable insight about the other, and vice versa. Recent neuroscience studies have found that mental state transitions, such as the transition from wakefulness to slow-wave sleep and then to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, modulate temporary interactions in a class of neurons known as layer 5 pyramidal two-point neurons (TPNs), aligning them with a person’s mental states.
These are interactions between information originating from the external world, broadly referred to as the receptive field (RF1), and inputs emerging from internal states, referred to as the contextual field (CF2). Past findings suggest that RF1 and CF2 inputs are processed at two distinct sites within the neurons, known as the basal site and apical site, respectively.
Current AI algorithms employing attention mechanisms, such as transformers, perceiver and flamingo models, are inspired by the capabilities of the human brain. In their current form, however, they do not reliably emulate high-level perceptual processing and the imaginative states experienced by humans.
Blood-Brain Barrier ‘Guardian’ Shows Promise Against Alzheimer’s
A new drug targeting inflammation in the brain has been shown to bolster the blood-brain barrier in mice, pioneering a potential shift in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“Finding [the drug] blocks brain inflammation and protects the blood-brain barrier was an exciting new discovery,” says pathologist Sanford Markowitz from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).
What’s more, the researchers note that amyloid levels – the abnormally clumping proteins traditionally thought to play a role in the progress of Alzheimer’s – remained the same. This suggests the new treatment, focusing on an immune protein called 15-PGDH, targets a completely different physiological pathway than many existing medications.