by Laurel Hamers, University of Oregon An often-overlooked communication strategy for neurons might be more prevalent than previously believed. New research from biology professor Adam Miller’s lab in the UO’s College of Arts and Sciences illuminates the importance of neuron-to-neuron communication via direct electrical signaling, instead of the usual chemical messengers sent between cells. The team...
by Caroline Sheedy, Carnegie Mellon University Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In a paper published in Neuron, Aryn Gittis and colleagues present new information about a neural pathway in the basal ganglia, a part of the brain important for skill learning, habit formation and motor control. The paper contradicts the model that has guided researchers’ understanding of motor...
by James Devitt, New York University Credit: public domain The size of our primary visual cortex and the amount of brain tissue we have dedicated to processing visual information at certain locations of visual space can predict how well we can see, a team of neuroscientists has discovered. Its study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications,...
Interview conducted by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Dec 15 2021 Thought LeadersDr. Adam Tyson Professor Troy MargrieBrainGlobe An interview with Professor Troy Margrie, Associate Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, and Dr. Adam Tyson, former member of the Margrie lab and now the Scientific Software Lead at the Institute of Cancer Research. Please could you introduce yourself and...
by University of California – Berkeley Brain slice from a transgenic mouse, in which genetically defined neurons in the cerebral cortex are labeled with a red fluorescent reporter gene. Credit: Tanya Daigle, the Allen Institute When you clicked to read this story, a band of cells across the top of your brain sent signals down your...
Sarah Scoles January 21, 2020 Some of the hearing loss we’ve blamed on age might be due to how many fire trucks we’ve stood next to. But there are still ways to diagnose—and protect—against that environmental damage.Anthony Gerace Tucked inside the air traffic control tower in Portland, Maine, Samantha Bassett was busy making sure planes didn’t...
When the brain forms a memory of a new experience, neurons called engram cells to encode the details of the memory and are later reactivated whenever we recall it. A new MIT study reveals that this process is controlled by large-scale remodeling of cells’ chromatin. This remodeling, which allows specific genes involved in storing memories...
by Toby Leigh, University of Plymouth Research carried out by a University academic has shed new light on the fundamentals of how, and why, we make the decisions we do. In two separate studies, UKRI Future Leader Fellow and Lecturer in Psychology, Dr. Elsa Fouragnan has used her expertise in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)...
by Universitaet Mainz Remyelination in the spinal cord after experimental focal degradation of myelin sheaths, simulating a lesion caused by multiple sclerosis. In young adults, the myelin sheath (dark rings) around axons (light gray circular structures) can be rebuilt, but this process is not fully efficient and its efficiency decreases sharply with age and as...
by Tom Abate, Stanford University A current neural implant that uses wires to transmit information and receive power. Credit: Sergey Stavisky Stanford researchers have been working for years to advance a technology that could one day help people with paralysis regain use of their limbs, and enable amputees to use their thoughts to control prostheses...
