Glioblastoma is one of the most deadly forms of cancer. Affecting the brain, those unlucky enough to receive a diagnosis don’t have many treatment options – and usually a median life expectancy of just over a year. Now, researchers at MIT have developed nanoparticles that could provide hope, crossing the blood-brain barrier and delivering two types of...
Tag: <span>brain</span>
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Holographic Laser Activates Groups of Brain Neurons
At the University of California, Berkeley neuroscientists are engaged in activities normally reserved for sci-fi books. They’re using holographic projectors to control the activity of entire groups of neurons at the same time. Though there’s certainly room for abuse, the therapeutic and scientific potential for being able to manipulate the brain in a detailed fashion...
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Pericytes: Capillary Guardians in the Brain
Nerve cells, or neurons, in our brains, do amazing work, from telling our hearts to beat to storing our memories. But neurons cannot operate alone. Many kinds of cells support and regulate neurons and—like neurons—they can come under attack due to injuries or disorders, such as stroke or Alzheimer’s disease. Learning what jobs these cells...
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We can change our brain and its ability to cope with disease with simple lifestyle choices
Lifestyle factors such as meditation can change our brain for the better. Our life expectancy has increased dramatically over the past several decades, with advances in medical research, nutrition and health care seeing us live well into our 80s. But this longer life expectancy has also come at a cost, as the longer we live,...
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Three-minute version of brain stimulation therapy effective for hard-to-treat depression
In the largest study of its kind, a three-minute version of a brain stimulation treatment was shown to be just as effective as the standard 37-minute version for hard-to-treat depression. These results were published in a new Canadian study in The Lancet co-led by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the University Health Network’s...
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Music activates regions of the brain spared by Alzheimer’s disease
Ever get chills listening to a particularly moving piece of music? You can thank the salience network of the brain for that emotional joint. Surprisingly, this region also remains an island of remembrance that is spared from the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. Diagram of brain networks involved in processing attention. Researchers at the University of Utah...
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Pathways to spatial recognition
Specialized nerve cells of the mammalian brain, called pyramidal cells, are involved in memory-guided navigation. Here, the axons of three individual pyramidal cells (red, green, and magenta) are traced from their target regions. When you are lost or disoriented, your brain uses cues from your surroundings—landmarks both near and far—to sort out where you are....
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Brain scans may help diagnose neurological, psychiatric disorders
Brain networks from nine people were analyzed to generate the heat map above, which shows the areas that change the most (red) to the least (green), from person to person. A new study shows that individual brain networks are remarkably. There are no laboratory tests to diagnose migraines, depression, bipolar disorder and many other ailments...
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Researchers find the brain processes sight and sound in same manner
Although sight is a much different sense than sound, Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists have found that the human brain learns to make sense of these stimuli in the same way. The researchers say in a two-step process, neurons in one area of the brain learn the representation of the stimuli, and another area categorizes...
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Enigmatic gene critical for a healthy brain
A cross section of the mouse olfactory bulb. Green is electroporated neuroblasts born in the sub ventricular zone that migrated into the olfactory bulb. Blue is a DAPI nuclear counterstain. Credit: Francis Szele New research has shown how an unusual gene is needed for brain development in young mice. Since the human genome was first sequenced in...