A new study of over 45,000 young adults found that using screens in bed increases the risk of insomnia by 59% and cuts sleep by 24 minutes.
Category: neuroscience – Page 87
Radical Study Proposes a Single Cause to Explain Alzheimer’s Disease
A new model of Alzheimer’s disease has been proposed, which could speed up efforts to understand and cure the complex condition – while bringing all manifestations of the condition under one unifying theory.
Researchers from Arizona State University suggest that stress granules – protein and RNA clumps that form around cells in stressful conditions due to genetic and environmental risk factors – are the primary culprit behind the disease.
In their new study, the team reviewed data from multiple health databases and past papers – particularly a 2022 study on Alzheimer’s progression – to identify widespread changes in gene expression that come with it.
How the brain distinguishes between pain and itch
1. Non-selective neurons, which respond to both pain and itch stimuli indiscriminately.
2. Stimulus-specific neurons, which were selectively activated by either pain or itch stimuli.
Furthermore, using the dual-eGRASP technique—an advanced synaptic analysis method the research team discovered that stimulus-specific neurons in the ACC receive distinct synaptic inputs from the mediodorsal thalamus (MD). This finding indicates that pain and itch are processed by independent neuronal populations within the ACC, which receive differentiated synaptic inputs, providing fundamental insights into the neural mechanisms of pain and itch processing.
To further confirm the role of these neurons, the team used chemogenetic techniques to selectively deactivate either pain-specific or itch-specific neurons. The results showed suppressing pain neurons reduced pain perception without affecting itch, and vice versa. This discovery suggests that these neurons play a direct role in shaping how we experience pain and itch.
A research team have uncovered the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of pain and itch in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This study provides new insights into how the brain distinguishes between these two distinct sensory experiences.
Pain and itch are both unpleasant sensations, but they trigger different responses—pain often prompts withdrawal, while itching leads to scratching. Until now, scientists have struggled to understand how the brain processes these sensations separately, as they share overlapping neural pathways from the spinal cord to the brain.
Newly discovered weight loss peptide without side effects
How microglia facilitate phagocytosis of multiple types of pathological particles.
The functions, and molecular signaling of elevated glycoprotein non-metastatic melanoma B (GPNMB) in various brain diseases is not been well studied.
The researchers report that GPNMB expression in microglia is commonly induced by multiple types of pathological factors (neuronal degeneration caused by seizures, caspase-3-induced neuronal apoptosis, neuronal debris, and β-amyloid) functionally participating in phagocytosis of pathological particles via interaction with lysosomal vacuolar-type proton ATPase catalytic subunit A (ATP6V1A) and anti-inflammation responses.
GPNMB depletion does not influence the severity of acute seizures but exacerbates the development of chronic epileptogenesis. https://sciencemission.com/microglia-phagocytosis-of-pathological-particles
Liu et al. report that GPNMB expression in microglia is commonly induced by multiple types of pathological factors functionally participating in phagocytosis of pathological particles via interaction with ATP6V1A and anti-inflammation responses. GPNMB depletion does not influence the severity of acute seizures but exacerbates the development of chronic epileptogenesis.
