Alan Turing was a pioneer in the field of computer science. One of the things he is famous for is the Turing test. At its core, this is a test about whether or not a machine, a computer, can conv…
Category: neuroscience – Page 97
25 Years of Vision: Unlocking the Brain’s Potential — Mark Howe
Mark Howe (Graybiel Lab Alumni), Boston University.
“Probing Neuromodulator Signals for Learning and Action”
Talk was a part of the McGovern Institute’s 25th Anniversary Symposium.
AI identifies PHGDH as amyloid pathology driver in Alzheimer’s disease
Insomnia, depression, and anxiety are the most common mental disorders. Treatments are often only moderately effective, with many people experiencing returning symptoms. This is why it is crucial to find new leads for treatments. Notably, these disorders overlap a lot, often occurring together. Could there be a shared brain mechanism behind this phenomenon?
Siemon de Lange, Elleke Tissink, and Eus van Someren, together with their colleagues from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, investigated brain scans of more than 40,000 participants from the UK Biobank. The research is published in the journal Nature Mental Health.
Tissink says, “In our lab, we explore the similarities and differences between insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Everyone looks at this from a different perspective: some mainly look at genetics and in this study, we look at brain scans. What aspects are shared between the disorders, and what is unique to each one?”
How morphogens steer early brain development by guiding stem cell gene activity
Just a few weeks after conception, stem cells are already orchestrating the future structure of the human brain. A new Yale-led study shows that, early in development, molecular “traffic cops” known as morphogens regulate the activation of gene programs that initiate stem cells’ differentiation into more specialized brain cells.
The Yale team found that sensitivity to these signaling morphogens can vary not only between stem cells from different donors, but between stem cells derived from the same individual.
“This is a new chapter in understanding how we develop and how development can be influenced by genomic changes between people and by epigenetic modifications within individuals,” said Flora Vaccarino, the Harris Professor in the Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and co-senior author of the research, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.