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Category: neuroscience – Page 663

Dissociable rhythmic mechanisms enhance memory for conscious and nonconscious perceptual contents

Understanding the neural mechanisms of conscious and unconscious experience is a major goal of fundamental and translational neuroscience. Here, we target the early visual cortex with a protocol of noninvasive, high-resolution alternating current stimulation while participants performed a delayed target–probe discrimination task and reveal dissociable mechanisms of mnemonic processing for conscious and unconscious perceptual contents. Entraining β-rhythms in bilateral visual areas preferentially enhanced short-term memory for seen information, whereas α-entrainment in the same region preferentially enhanced short-term memory for unseen information. The short-term memory improvements were frequency-specific and long-lasting. The results add a mechanistic foundation to existing theories of consciousness, call for revisions to these theories, and contribute to the development of nonpharmacological therapeutics for improving visual cortical processing.

Gene Involved in Neuronal Structure and Function May Protect Against Alzheimer’s Disease

The overexpression of a gene tied to cell division and the structure and function of neurons may prevent and protect against cognitive decline in both mice and humans with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), according to a new study by scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The gene, Kinesin-5 or KIF11, does this despite the presence of amyloid beta (Abeta), the main component of plaques in the brains of those with AD. Scientists have traditionally targeted the plaques when looking for treatments for the fatal disease. In this case, they went around them.

The study was published online last week in the journal iScience.

Huge unveiling of schizophrenia brain cells show new treatment targets

If you thought it was easy to analyze brain cells, think again.

When you take a brain tissue sample, all that your analysis would normally show you is an average for all the present. And since there are a whole lot of cell types in our brain— and others—you’ll get a sort of cell smoothie, which makes it difficult if not impossible to tell the cells apart, let alone study them.

It is like wanting to know how many green M&M’s there are in a bowl, but instead just getting told how many colors there are. You are not really getting the answer you wanted.

A telltale protein spreads throughout the brain in distinct patterns based on patients’ Alzheimer’s phenotype

New imaging of patients with Alzheimer’s demonstrates how a telltale protein spreads throughout the brain based on the phenotype of the disease, i.e., whether the condition is dominated by forgetfulness, or atrophy in a specific brain region. The research offers a host of illuminating clues that ultimately may inform new treatment strategies.

The protein is known as tau and a large multi-disciplinary team of brain researchers at McGill University in Montreal has been able to trace the protein’s patterns in living patients via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Alzheimer’s disease is intimately linked to tau, which can form tangles in the brain that irrevocably damage neurons.

The patterns detected by McGill scientists apparently are unique to the phenotype of Alzheimer’s afflicting the patient. This staggering finding opens an intriguing new window into the molecular mechanisms of the disease. And while many features of Alzheimer’s are the same from one patient to the next, phenotypes are a hallmark of the condition. Tracking tau patterns is a specialty of the scientists at McGill, who found that the intrinsic connectivity of the human brain itself provides the scaffolding for the aggregation of tau in distinct variants of the disease.

Neuroimaging study reveals functional and structural brain abnormalities in people with post-treatment Lyme disease

In a study using specialized imaging techniques, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report distinctive changes in the “white matter” and other brain tissue physiology of those with post-treatment Lyme disease, a condition affecting 10% to 20% of the nearly half a million Americans who contract Lyme disease annually.

The study’s findings, published October 26 in the journal PLOS ONE, substantiate and help validate that memory difficulties and other cognitive difficulties experienced long-term by individuals with post-treatment Lyme disease are linked to functional and structural changes in the brain.

Lyme disease, whose early symptoms may include a characteristic rash, flu-like aches and fever, , and fatigue, is treated using a rigorous course of antibiotics, which usually clears the illness.

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