As big pharma interest grows in bioelectronics medicine, Astellas swoops in for a startup developing wireless, grain-sized devices powered by ultrasound for CNS disease monitoring and intervention.
Category: neuroscience – Page 486
A Single Enzyme Could Be Behind Some People’s Depression, Scientists Say
For a while now, we’ve known there’s a complex interplay between our hormones, guts, and mental health, but untangling the most relevant connections within our bodies has proved challenging.
New research has found a single enzyme that links all three, and its presence may be responsible for depression in some women during their reproductive years.
Wuhan University medical researcher Di Li and colleagues compared the blood serum of 91 women aged between 18 and 45 years with depression and 98 without. Incredibly, those with depression had almost half the serum levels of estradiol – the primary form of estrogen our bodies use during our fertile years.
This Computer Chip is alive 🤯
The technology I want to talk about today is something out of this world, but also a bit controversial There is a startup in Australia who are actually growing live human neurons and then integrating it into traditional computer chips… mind-blowing stuff!
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This Lab-Grown Brain Made a Muscle TWITCH, Here’s How
Growing brains can be a tricky process, but growing ones that can make muscles move? That’s an incredible feat. Here’s how scientists did it.
How Close Are We to Farming Human Body Parts? — https://youtu.be/oRHxX9OW9ow.
Cerebral organoids at the air-liquid interface generate nerve tracts with functional output.
https://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/cerebral-organoids-at-the-air…al-output/
“The capacity for this model to be used to investigate the way in which neurons connect up within the brain and with the spinal cord could have important implications for our understanding of a range of diseases. In particular defects in neuronal connectivity are thought to underlie various psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia, autism, and depression. ”
Cerebral organoids at the air–liquid interface generate diverse nerve tracts with functional output.
https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/s41593-019-0350-2
“Finally, through electrophysiological and co-culture studies, we demonstrate functionality of these tracts, which are even capable of eliciting coordinated muscle contractions in co-cultured mouse spinal cord–muscle explants. This approach is likely to be a useful new tool, not only because of its ease, but also due to its util-ity in studying axon guidance, tract formation, and connectivity in a human system”
What’s Wrong With Growing Blobs of Brain Tissue?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/what-hap…ns/558881/
“The stuff we really care about in the brain, like consciousness, are emergent phenomena—they arise from the collective workings of individual neurons, which create a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. The problem is that we don’t know at what level these phenomena emerge. A neuron is not conscious. A person is. What about all the steps in the middle? What about 2 million neurons? 20 million? 200 million?”
Elements is more than just a science show. It’s your science-loving best friend, tasked with keeping you updated and interested on all the compelling, innovative and groundbreaking science happening all around us. Join our passionate hosts as they help break down and present fascinating science, from quarks to quantum theory and beyond.
Researchers detail groundbreaking Angelman syndrome development
Researchers at Texas A&M University have developed the first molecular therapeutic for Angelman syndrome to advance into clinical development.
In a new article, published today in Science Translational Medicine, Dr. Scott Dindot, an associate professor and EDGES Fellow in the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, and his team share the process through which they developed this novel therapeutic candidate, also known as 4.4.PS.L, or GTX-102. Dindot is also the executive director of molecular genetics at Ultragenyx, which is leading the development of GTX-102.
Angelman syndrome (AS) is a devastating, rare neurogenetic disorder that affects approximately 1 in 15,000 live births per year; the disorder is triggered by a loss of function of the maternal UBE3A gene in the brain, causing developmental delay, absent speech, movement or balance disorder, and seizures.
Telomere shortening—a sign of cellular aging—linked to signs of Alzheimer’s in brain scans
Changes in the brain caused by Alzheimer’s disease are associated with shortening of the telomeres—the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that shorten as cells age—according to a new study led by Anya Topiwala of Oxford Population Health, part of the University of Oxford, UK, published March 22 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Telomeres on chromosomes protect DNA from degrading, but every time a cell divides, the telomeres lose some of their length. Short telomeres are a sign of stress and cellular aging, and are also associated with a higher risk of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Currently, little is known about the links between telomere length and changes that occur in the brains of people with neurological conditions. Understanding those relationships could offer insights into the biological mechanisms that cause neurodegenerative disorders.
In the new study, researchers compared telomere length in white blood cells to results from brain MRIs and electronic health records from more than 31,000 participants in the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing anonymized genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants.
Growing Neurons to Heal Brain Damage
Watch as primordial neural cells dance across, grow into, and even move 3D scaffolds engineered to heal brain injury from stroke and other trauma. Decorating the scaffold with various nutrients and biochemical signals allow researchers to control what types of brain tissues they become.