by Kim Krieger, University of Connecticut Perceiving speech requires quieting certain types of brain cells, report a team of researchers from UConn Health and University of Rochester in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology. Their research reveals a previously unknown population of brain cells, and opens up a new way of understanding how the brain hears. Your brain is...
Tag: <span>Neurophysiology</span>
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Brain-Computer Interface Lets Man with Complete Spinal Cord Injury Feel and Move His Hand
Spinal cord injuries can leave people paralyzed and without a sense of touch in much of the body. While there’s been a tremendous amount of work in the past decade to overcome paralysis by using brain-computer interfaces to bypass damaged spinal cords, providing a sense of touch is a necessity for truly proper treatment. As...
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Nerve stimulation and repetitive sounds help improve hearing
by American Physiological Society Combining seizure-preventing electrical stimulation with repetitive musical tones improves processing of sounds in the brain, according to new research. The discovery may provide relief for chronic ringing in the ears (tinnitus) and aid communication skills in people with autism. The first-of-its-kind study, published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurophysiology...
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New method uses just a drop of blood to monitor lung cancer treatment
Dr. Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the immune T-cell protein PD-1. This discovery led to a set of anti-cancer medications called checkpoint inhibitors, one of the first of which was nivolumab (Opdivo). Nivolumab helps T-cells fight tumors, however, different patients respond in different ways. It now appears...
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Protein has unique effects on information processing
Our cognitive abilities come down to how well the connections, or synapses, between our brain cells transmit signals. Now a new study by researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has dug deeply into the molecular mechanisms that enable synaptic transmission to show the distinct role of a protein that, when mutated, has been linked to causing intellectual disability. The key protein, called...
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Attention network plays key role in restoring vision after brain damage
About one-third of patients who have suffered a stroke end up with impaired vision, losing up to half of their visual field. This partial blindness was long considered irreversible, but recent studies have shown that vision training after optic nerve and brain damage can restore or improve vision. A new study published in the journal...
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Researchers discover mechanism that allows rapid signal transmission between nerve cells
Researchers at Charité’s NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence have successfully identified the mechanism behind rapid signal transmission. Their work, published in the current issue of Nature Neuroscience, shows that bridging by a specific protein is responsible for this high speed of transmission. The manner in which individual nerve cells communicate is fundamental to human brain function. Signal transmission occurs...