Laura Sanders SAN DIEGO — Mice yanked out of their community and held in solitary isolation show signs of brain damage. After a month of being alone, the mice had smaller nerve cells in certain parts of the brain. Other brain changes followed, scientists reported at a news briefing November 4 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. It’s not known whether similar damage happens in the brains of isolated humans. If so, the result have implications for the health of people who spend much of their time alone, including the estimated tens of thousands of inmates in solitary confinement in the United States and elderly people in institutionalized care facilities. The new results, along with other recent brain studies, clearly show that for social species, isolation is damaging, says neurobiologist Huda Akil of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “There is no question that this is changing the basic architecture of the brain,” Akil says. Neurobiologist Richard Smeyne of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and his colleagues raised communities of multiple generations of mice in large enclosures packed with toys, mazes and things to climb. When some of the animals reached adulthood, they were taken out and put individually into “a typical shoebox cage,” Smeyne said. This abrupt switch from a complex society to isolation induced changes in the brain, Smeyne and his colleagues later found. The overall size of nerve cells, or neurons, shrunk by about 20 percent after a month of isolation. That shrinkage held roughly steady over three months as mice remained in isolation. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Stress; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25649 - Posted: 11.06.2018

By James Gorman If you love spiders, you will really love jumping spiders. (If you hate spiders, try reading this article on dandelions.) O.K., if you’re still here, jumping spiders are predators that stalk their prey and leap on them, like a cat. They are smart, agile and have terrific eyesight. It has been clear for a long time that their vision is critical to the way they hunt, and to the accuracy of their leaps. But a lot has remained unknown about the way their eyes work together. To find out more, Elizabeth Jakob, a spider biologist at the University of Massachusetts, led a team of researchers from the United States, Kenya and New Zealand in an investigation of spider vision. The first step was getting a custom-built spider eye tracker, similar to ones used on humans, to follow a spider’s gaze. Actually, Dr. Jakob had two made, probably the only two in the world. She has one and her colleagues in New Zealand have the other. Jumping spiders have eight eyes. Two big eyes, right in the center of what you might call the spider’s forehead, are the principal ones, and they pick up detail and color. Of the other three pairs, a rear set looks backward, a middle set is as yet a bit of a mystery, and the foremost detect motion. The lenses of the main eyes are attached by flexible tubes to retinas. A camera was set up to look down those tubes and see the activity of the retinas, which look a bit like boomerangs. The inside of the spider’s head was lit by ultraviolet light, which penetrates the outer carapace. But as accurate as the main eyes are, they only see what is in front of them. If they had to find prey, it would be like using a narrow flashlight beam to explore a dark room. Not very efficient. The researchers found that the front pair of secondary eyes, the motion detectors, tell the main pair of eyes where to look. When they were painted over temporarily and the spider was presented with moving images, it had no idea where to look. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 25648 - Posted: 11.06.2018

Jon Hamilton You hear a new colleague's name. You get directions to the airport. You glance at a phone number you're about to call. These are the times you need working memory, the brain's system for temporarily holding important information. "Working memory is the sketchpad of your mind; it's the contents of your conscious thoughts," says Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. It's also "a core component of higher cognitive functions like planning or language or intelligence," says Christos Constantinidis, a professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest University. Miller and Constantinidis agree that working memory is critical to just about everything the brain does. They also agree that problems with working memory are a common symptom of brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. But they are on opposite sides of a lively debate about how working memory works. Both scientists are presenting evidence to support their position at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego this week. They also faced off with dual perspectives in the Journal of Neuroscience in August. Constantinidis backs what he calls the standard model of working memory, which has been around for decades. It says that when we want to keep new information like a phone number, neurons in the front of the brain start firing — and keep firing. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25647 - Posted: 11.05.2018

Surgeons have tested the use of a fluorescent marker that can help them remove dangerous brain tumour cells from patients more accurately. The research was carried out on people who had suspected glioblastoma, the disease that killed British politician Dame Tessa Jowell in May, and the most common form of brain cancer. Treatment usually involves surgery to remove as much of the cancer as possible, but it can be challenging for surgeons to identify all the cancer cells while avoiding healthy brain tissue. Researchers said using the fluorescent marker helped distinguish the most aggressive cancer cells from other brain tissue and they hope this will ultimately improve patient survival. They used a compound called 5-aminolevulinic acid or 5-ALA, which the patient drinks. The compound glows pink when a light is shone on it. Previous research shows that 5-ALA accumulates in fast-growing cancer cells so it can act as a fluorescent marker of high-grade cells. The study was carried out on 99 patients with suspected high-grade gliomas – a kind of tumour –who were treated at Royal Liverpool hospital, King’s college hospital in London and Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge. They were aged between 23 and 77, with an average age of 59. During their operations, surgeons reported seeing fluorescence in 85 patients and 81 of these were subsequently confirmed by pathologists to have high-grade disease. One was found to have low-grade disease and three could not be assessed. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25646 - Posted: 11.05.2018

By David Prologo “Exercise isn’t really important for weight loss” has become a popular sentiment in the weight-loss community. “It’s all about diet,” many say. “Don’t worry about exercise so much.” This idea crept out amid infinite theories about dieting and weight loss, and it quickly gained popularity, with one article alone citing 60 studies to support and spread this notion like wildfire. The truth is that you absolutely can — and should — exercise your way to weight loss. So why is anyone saying otherwise? For 10 years, I have been studying the epidemic of failed weight-loss attempts and researching the phenomenon of hundreds of millions of people embarking on weight-loss attempts — then quitting. Meanwhile, exercise remains the most common practice among nationally tracked persons who are able to maintain weight loss over time. Ninety percent of people who lose significant weight and keep it off exercise at least one hour a day, on average. There are a few reasons that exercise for weight loss gets a bad rap. First, the public is looking, in large part, for a quick fix — and the diet and weight-loss industry exploits this consumer desire for an immediate solution. Many studies have shown that exercise changes your body’s composition, improves your resting metabolism and alters your food preferences. These plain and simple facts have stood the test of time, but go largely unnoticed compared to most sensationalized diet products (change through exercise over time is a much tougher sell than a five-day “cleanse”). Moreover, many people consider one hour a day for exercise to be unreasonable or undoable, and find themselves looking elsewhere for an easier fix. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 25645 - Posted: 11.05.2018

Jef Akst When presented with two levers, laboratory rats that were exposed to cannabis in utero were able to learn to push the one below the lightbulb that lit up. But the animals struggled to adjust their strategy when the rules of the game changed, for example, when they received a sugar reward when they pushed only the left or right lever regardless of the lightbulb. Rats born to mothers who had not inhaled cannabis were better able to learn the new strategy. The results, presented yesterday (November 4) at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference, are “indicative of an inability to acquire and maintain a new strategy” following fetal cannabis exposure, says Hayden Wright, a PhD student in Ryan McLaughlin’s lab at Washington State University. Understanding such effects is critical as marijuana becomes legalized across the US, he adds. “As states allow more access, there has been an increase in self-reported cannabis use during pregnancy.” Most studies of cannabis exposure in rodents have used injections of purified THC, the psychoactive ingredient in the drug, and the results are therefore hard to translate to humans who smoke marijuana, which contains more than 100 other active cannabinoids, Wright says. So the McLaughlin lab developed an experimental system that vaporizes cannabis extract into a glass enclosure where rats can be kept for variable periods of time. For the current study, the researchers placed female rats in the chamber for two one-hour sessions per day throughout mating and gestation. During these sessions, the animals were exposed to cannabis-free vapor or vapor that contained high or low levels of the drug. The offspring of these rats were then tested for their ability to learn a simple lever-pressing task at two-months old. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25644 - Posted: 11.05.2018

By Aaron E. Carroll Even before the recent news that a group of researchers managed to get several ridiculous fake studies published in reputable academic journals, people have been aware of problems with peer review. Throwing out the system — which deems whether research is robust and worth being published — would do more harm than good. But it makes sense to be aware of peer review’s potential weaknesses. Reviewers may be overworked and underprepared. Although they’re experts in the subject they are reading about, they get no specific training to do peer review, and are rarely paid for it. With 2.5 million peer-reviewed papers published annually worldwide — and more that are reviewed but never published — it can be hard to find enough people to review all the work. There is evidence that reviewers are not always consistent. A 2010 paper describes a study in which two researchers selected 12 articles already accepted by highly regarded journals, swapped the real names and academic affiliations for false ones, and resubmitted the identical material to the same journals that had already accepted them in the previous 18 to 32 months. Only 8 percent of editors or reviewers noticed the duplication, and three papers were detected and pulled. Of the nine papers that continued through the review process, eight were turned down, with 89 percent of reviewers recommending rejection. Peer review may be inhibiting innovation. It takes significant reviewer agreement to have a paper accepted. One potential downside is that important research bucking a trend or overturning accepted wisdom may face challenges surviving peer review. In 2015, a study published in P.N.A.S. tracked more than 1,000 manuscripts submitted to three prestigious medical journals. Of the 808 that were published at some point, the 2 percent that were most frequently cited had been rejected by the journals. An even bigger issue is that peer review may be biased. Reviewers can usually see the names of the authors and their institutions, and multiple studies have shown that reviews preferentially accept or reject articles based on a number of demographic factors. In a study published in eLife last year, researchers created a database consisting of more than 9,000 editors, 43,000 reviewers and 126,000 authors whose work led to about 41,000 articles in 142 journals in a number of domains. They found that women made up only 26 percent of editors, 28 percent of reviewers and 37 percent of authors. Analyses showed that this was not because fewer women were available for each role. © 2018 The New York Times Compan

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 25643 - Posted: 11.05.2018

By Ed Silverman, In a highly controversial move, the Food and Drug Administration approved an especially powerful opioid painkiller despite criticism that the medicine could be a “danger” to public health. And in doing so, the agency addressed wider regulatory thinking for endorsing such a medicine amid nationwide angst about overdoses and deaths attributed to opioids. The drug is called Dsuvia, which is a tablet version of an opioid marketed for intravenous delivery, but is administered under the tongue using a specially developed, single-dose applicator. These “unique features” make the medicine well-suited for the military and therefore was a priority for the Pentagon, a point that factored heavily into the decision, according to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. Although an FDA advisory committee last month recommended approval, the agency was urged by critics not to endorse the drug because it is 10 times more powerful than fentanyl, a highly addictive opioid. Among those who opposed approval were four U.S. senators and the FDA advisory panel chair, who could not attend the meeting, but took the rare step of later writing a letter to the agency. The objections included complaints that Dsuvia has no unique medical benefits and might be easily diverted by medical personnel, despite a risk mitigation plan the manufacturer, AcelRx Pharmaceuticals, must maintain. There was also criticism the FDA failed to convene the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, not just the Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee. Last year, the FDA refused to approve the medicine over concerns about usage directions and a need for additional safety data. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25642 - Posted: 11.03.2018

Allison Aubrey When it comes to turning back the clocks on our devices, technology has us covered. Our smartphones automatically adjust. But our internal clocks aren't as easy to re-program. And this means that the time shift to save daylight in the fall and again in the spring can influence our health in unexpected ways. "You might not think that a one hour change is a lot," says Fred Turek, who directs the Center for Sleep & Circadian Biology at Northwestern University. "But it turns out that the master clock in our brain is pretty hard-wired, " Turek explains. It's synchronized to the 24 hour light/dark cycle. Daylight is a primary cue to reset the body's clock each day. So, if daylight comes an hour earlier — as it will for many of us this weekend — it throws us off. "The internal clock has to catch up, and it takes a day or two to adjust to the new time," Turek says. Scientists have documented that the shift to daylight saving time in the spring, when we lose an hour of sleep, can increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and traffic accidents. These studies are a reminder of just how sensitive we are to time and rhythm. Over the last 20 years, scientists have documented that, in addition to the master clock in our brains, every cell in our body has a time-keeping mechanism. These clocks help regulate important functions such as sleep and metabolism. And increasingly, there's evidence that when our habits — such as when we eat and sleep — are out of sync with our internal clocks, it can harm us. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 25641 - Posted: 11.03.2018

Ian Sample In daylight hours there is so little melatonin in the bloodstream that it is barely detectable. But when the sun goes down, the eyes sense the failing light, and part of the hippocampus signals the pineal gland, a pea-sized lump of tissue near the centre of the brain, to ramp up production of the sleep-promoting hormone. Levels of melatonin rise sharply from 9pm, inducing feelings of sleepiness, and remain high until the following morning. Much of the research on prescribing melatonin for children with sleep problems has focused on those with disorders such as autism, ADHD and intellectual disability (ID). For good reason too: sleeping difficulties are far more common and pronounced in children with neurodevelopmental or psychiatric disorders. For them, small doses of melatonin can be safe and effective. In one recent study, researchers from Southampton University monitored the sleep patterns of 45 children with autism, ADHD, or ID, and found that a third fell asleep faster, slept longer, and woke less frequently at night on low dose (2.5-3mg) melatonin. Above 6mg per night there was little extra benefit. A poor night’s sleep can be caused by any number of factors, but there is good evidence that screen time matters, whether it is TV, computer, tablet or mobile phone. A recent review of scientific papers on the issue found that 90% linked screen time to poor sleep in schoolchildren and adolescents. Part of the problem is obvious: being online at bedtime eats into the hours left for sleep, and it hardly helps people to wind down for the night. But glowing screens can affect sleep directly by suppressing the natural production of melatonin. Using an iPad on full brightness for two hours, for example, has been shown to suppress melatonin levels. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25640 - Posted: 11.03.2018

By David Grimm The number of monkeys used in U.S. biomedical research reached an all-time high last year, according to data released in late September by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The uptick (see graph below)—to nearly 76,000 nonhuman primates in 2017—appears to reflect growing demand from scientists who believe nonhuman primates are more useful than other animals, such as mice or dogs, for testing drugs and studying diseases that also strike humans. “I think the numbers are trending up because these animals give us better data. … We need them more than ever,” says Jay Rappaport, director of the Tulane National Primate Research Center in Covington, Louisiana, which houses about 5000 monkeys. The increase also comes amidst a surge in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which supports much of the nonhuman primate research in the United States. The figures have surprised and disappointed groups seeking to reduce the use of lab animals. The biomedical community has said it is committed to reducing the use of research animals by finding replacements and using these animals more selectively, says Thomas Hartung, director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing in Baltimore, Maryland. But the new numbers suggest “people are just blindly running toward the monkey model without critically evaluating how valuable it really is.” © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 25639 - Posted: 11.03.2018

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have reached a milestone in their quest to catalog the brain’s “parts list.” The NIH BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN) has issued its first data release. Posted on a public web portal (link is external) for researchers, it profiles molecular identities of more than 1.3 million mouse brain cells and anatomical data from 300 mouse brains – among the largest such characterizations to date. BICCN research teams (link is external) focused initially on a key area of the mouse motor cortex, an area of the brain that controls movement, as a first major step in the 5-year effort. Initiated in 2017, the BICCN projects aim to build comprehensive, three-dimensional common reference brain atlases that will ultimately integrate molecular, anatomical and functional data on cell types in mouse, human and non-human primate brains. To expedite scientific impact, they are making their data immediately available to the research community via the web portal. “No single research group could do this by themselves—they needed to leverage the power of a team,” explained Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which is helping to coordinate the BRAIN Initiative effort. “The BICCN is a product of nine different teams each bringing to bear their finely-honed tools to the same brain region at the same time. By doing so, they could compare results and create a unified resource for the community.” The new molecular fingerprints cover comprehensive information on gene transcription and epigenomic signature maps of the brain cells. Each type of cell is classified according to its molecular characteristics and identifiable by telltale marker genes.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Epigenetics
Link ID: 25638 - Posted: 11.02.2018

by Lena Simon Four limbs. Warm blood. A love for cheese. And a hatred for infidelity. Although this may sound characteristic of the average Wisconsinite, the previous is actually also true for the California mouse. A recent University of Wisconsin news release revealed research that shows California pair-bonded mice become increasingly vocal after infidelity experiences. Experiments were designed to test how communication changes after mice have been given the opportunity to be “unfaithful” to their bonded mate. The California deer mouse, or Peromyscus californicus, is part of only 3 to 5 percent of mammal species that practice any kind of monogamy, per research from the National Science Foundation. At UW, research on the California mouse is ongoing. Josh Pultorak, a biology instructor at Madison Area Technical College and UW’s Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, led this research. He and his collaborators identified several types of sounds that the California mouse makes, all of which are ultrasonic — unable to be heard by the human ear unless slowed down to about 5 percent of their original speed. These include chirps — or “sweeps,” which are usually more peaceful sounds — and barks, which indicate aggression. Microbes in your gut could hold cure to diabetesThere are millions of microbes living in your gut. They help you digest and access nutrients your own organs would Read… The Badger Herald, 1995 - 2018

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25637 - Posted: 11.02.2018

Devika G. Bansal Tools that use light, drugs, or temperature to make neurons fire or rest on command have become a mainstay in neuroscience. Thermogenetics, which enables neurons to respond to temperature shifts, first took off with fruit flies about a decade ago, but is emerging as a new trick to manipulate the neural functioning of other model organisms. That’s due to some advantages it affords over optogenetics—the light-based technique that started it all. Genetic toolkits such as thermogenetics and optogenetics follow a basic recipe: scientists pick a receptor that responds to an external cue such as temperature or light, express the receptor in specific neurons as a switch that changes the cell’s voltage—triggering or inhibiting firing—and then use the cue to turn the neural switch on or off. Optogenetics revolutionized our understanding of how the brain’s wiring affects animal behavior. But it comes with drawbacks. For one, delivering light into the deepest regions of the brains of nontransparent animals is a challenge. In mice, this requires surgically inserting optical fibers into the brain, tethering the animal to the light source. Researchers working with adult fruit flies can cut a window through the head cuticle to access the brain. In both cases, the necessary experimental setups are invasive and often time and effort intensive. Additionally, the light intensity required for optogenetics tends to damage tissue. “You pump a lot of light through the optical fiber to activate neurons,” says Vsevolod Belousov, a biochemist at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow who develops thermogenetic tools. “In general, this is not avoidable.” © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25636 - Posted: 11.02.2018

By Alycia Halladay Click-worthy health and science headlines are an essential currency in today’s media world. When they pertain to autism, they might include phrases like “groundbreaking trial,” “offer hope” or “game-changer.” But for people with autism and their families, these headlines and the research news stories they highlight often bring false hope, confusion—or worse. There is something about autism, a disorder that remains widely misunderstood, that seems to encourage the promulgation of news coverage about potential “breakthroughs” and unorthodox treatment approaches. A nearly constant stream of headlines touts promising new findings that supposedly help explain the origins of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), improve our understanding of its key features or reveal novel ways to treat the symptoms. This attention is a mixed blessing. It can encourage talented scientists to design research to better understand autism. It also generates support for advocacy efforts and research funding, and I have seen it motivate people to participate in research studies. However, there is a dark side to this almost insatiable interest in autism science news: it has created an environment that encourages media hype of early, preliminary findings, with headlines that are tantalizing but not always accurate. The hype machine also too often promotes mediocre or even bad science, which ultimately puts people with autism at risk. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25635 - Posted: 11.02.2018

Ashley P. Taylor Two studies in mice published today (October 31) in Nature report the existence of several types of brain cells that had not been acknowledged before. These cell types are distinguished by their gene expression patterns, and within one cortical area, they perform distinct functions. For the gene expression study, led by the Allen Institute’s Hongkui Zeng, researchers performed single-cell RNA sequencing on more than 20,000 cells, most of which were neurons, in the visual cortex and the anterior lateral motor cortex of the mouse brain. Using this method, they identified 133 distinct cell types, both excitatory and inhibitory. They found that the various inhibitory neurons were present in both cortical areas but that the excitatory cell types kept to specific regions, as neuroscientists Aparna Bhaduri and Tomasz Nowakowski of the University of California, San Francisco, describe in an accompanying Nature commentary. “When we see not only cell types that people have identified before, but a number of new ones that are showing up in the data, it’s really exciting for us,” says Zeng in a press release. “It’s like we are able to put all the different pieces of the puzzle The other study, led by Karel Svoboda of the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, examined the functions of two subtypes identified through the gene-expression study. These are excitatory cells called pyramidal tract neurons that reside within layer five of the anterior lateral motor cortex in mice. The researchers used optogenetics to activate either one neuronal subtype or the other in mice and at the same time monitored the activity of the two types of neurons during movement. They found that pyramidal tract neurons in the upper part of layer five seem to be involved in preparing for movement, whereas those in the lower part of layer five help execute it. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25634 - Posted: 11.02.2018

Ian Sample Science editor Two men who were paralysed in separate accidents more than six years ago can stand and walk short distances on crutches after their spinal cords were treated with electrical stimulation. David Mzee, 28, and Gert-Jan Oskam, 35, had electrical pulses beamed into their spines to stimulate their leg muscles as they practised walking in a supportive harness on a treadmill. Doctors believe the timing of the pulses – to coincide with natural movement signals that were still being sent from the patients’ brains – was crucial. It appeared to encourage nerves that bypassed the injuries to form new connections and improve the men’s muscle control. In many spinal cord injuries a small portion of nerves remain intact but the signals they carry are too feeble to move limbs or support a person’s body weight. “They have both recovered control of their paralysed muscles and I don’t think anyone with a chronic injury, one they’ve had for six or seven years, has been able to do that before,” said Grégoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. “When you stimulate the nerves like this it triggers plasticity in the cells. The brain is trying to stimulate, and we stimulate at same time, and we think that triggers the growth of new nerve connections.” Mzee was paralysed in a gymnastics accident in 2010. He recovered the use of his upper body and some control of his right leg after intensive rehabilitation at a paraplegic centre in Zurich. Doctors there told him further improvement was unlikely, but after five months of training with electrical stimulation, he regained control of the muscles in his right leg and can now take a few steps without assistance. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Regeneration; Robotics
Link ID: 25633 - Posted: 11.01.2018

Aimee Cunningham The appendix, a once-dismissed organ now known to play a role in the immune system, may contribute to a person’s chances of developing Parkinson’s disease. An analysis of data from nearly 1.7 million Swedes found that those who’d had their appendix removed had a lower overall risk of Parkinson’s disease. Also, samples of appendix tissue from healthy individuals revealed protein clumps similar to those found in the brains of Parkinson’s patients, researchers report online October 31 in Science Translational Medicine. Together, the findings suggest that the appendix may play a role in the early events of Parkinson’s disease, Viviane Labrie, a neuroscientist at the Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich., said at a news conference on October 30. Parkinson’s, which affects more than 10 million people worldwide, is a neurodegenerative disease that leads to difficulty with movement, coordination and balance. It’s unknown what causes Parkinson’s, but one hallmark of the disease is the death of nerve cells, or neurons, in a brain region called the substantia nigra that helps control movement. Lewy bodies, which are mostly made of clumped bits of the protein alpha-synuclein (SN: 1/12/2013, p. 13), also build up in those neurons but the connection between the cells’ death and the Lewy bodies isn’t clear yet. Symptoms related to Parkinson’s can show up in the gut earlier than they do in the brain (SN: 12/10/2016, p. 12). So Labrie and her colleagues turned their attention to the appendix, a thin tube around 10 centimeters long that protrudes from the large intestine on the lower right side of the abdomen. Often considered a “useless organ,” Labrie said, “the appendix is actually an immune tissue that’s responsible for sampling and monitoring pathogens.” |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 25632 - Posted: 11.01.2018

Jeffrey M. Perkel Randal Burns recalls that the brain-science community was “abuzz” in 2011. Burns, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, was focusing on astrophysics and fluid dynamics data management at the time. But he was intrigued when Joshua Vogelstein, a neuroscientist and colleague at Johns Hopkins, told him that the first large-scale neural-connectivity data sets had just been collected and asked for his help to present them online. “It was the first time that you had data of that quality, at that resolution and scale, where you had the sense that you could build a neural map of an interesting portion of the brain,” says Burns. Vogelstein worked with Burns to build a system that would make those data — 20 trillion voxels’ worth — available to the larger neuroscience community. The team has now generalized the software to support different classes of imaging data and describes the system this week (J. T. Vogelstein et al. Nature Meth. 15, 846-847; 2018). NeuroData is a free, cloud-based collection of web services that supports large-scale neuroimaging data, from electron microscopy to magnetic resonance imaging and fluorescence photomicrographs. Key to its functionality, Vogelstein says, is the spatial database bossDB, which allows researchers to retrieve images of any section of the brain, at any resolution, and in several standard formats. Users can then explore those data using a tool known as Neuroglancer. As they navigate the images, the URL changes to reflect their specific view, allowing them to share particular visualizations with their colleagues. “These links become a core part of the way in which we communicate and pass data back and forth to one another,” says Forrest Collman, a neuroscientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, Washington, and a co-author of the paper. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25631 - Posted: 11.01.2018

A new study puts a fresh spin on what it means to “go with your gut.” The findings, published in Nature, suggest that gut bacteria may control movement in fruit flies and identify the neurons involved in this response. The study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. “This study provides additional evidence for a connection between the gut and the brain, and in particular outlines how gut bacteria may influence behavior, including movement,” said Margaret Sutherland, Ph.D., program director at NINDS. Researchers led by Sarkis K. Mazmanian, Ph.D., professor of microbiology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and graduate student Catherine E. Schretter, observed that germ-free flies, which did not carry bacteria, were hyperactive. For instance, they walked faster, over greater distances, and took shorter rests than flies that had normal levels of microbes. Dr. Mazmanian and his team investigated ways in which gut bacteria may affect behavior in fruit flies. “Locomotion is important for a number of activities such as mating and searching for food. It turns out that gut bacteria may be critical for fundamental behaviors in animals,” said Dr. Mazmanian. Fruit flies carry between five and 20 different species of bacteria and Dr. Mazmanian’s team treated the germ-free animals with individual strains of those microbes. When the flies received Lactobacillus brevis, their movements slowed down to normal speed. L. brevis was one of only two species of bacteria that restored normal behavior in the germ-free flies.

Keyword: Movement Disorders
Link ID: 25630 - Posted: 11.01.2018