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Category: neuroscience

How neuron groups team up to embed memories in context

Humans have the remarkable ability to remember the same person or object in completely different situations. We can easily distinguish between dinner with a friend and a business meeting with the same friend. “We already know that deep in the memory centers of the brain, specific cells, called concept neurons, respond to this friend, regardless of the environment in which he appears,” says Prof. Florian Mormann from the Clinic for Epileptology at the UKB, who is also a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) Life & Health at the University of Bonn.

However, the brain must be able to combine this content with the context in order to form a useful memory. In rodents, individual neurons often mix these two pieces of information. “We asked ourselves: Does the human brain function fundamentally differently here? Does it map content and context separately to enable a more flexible memory? And how do these separate pieces of information connect when we need to remember specific content according to context?” says Dr. Marcel Bausch, working group leader at the Department of Epileptology and member of TRA Life & Health at the University of Bonn.

Bright light suppresses eating and weight gain in mice

Past research has found that exposure to bright lights and high levels of noise can alter both physiological processes and human behavior. For instance, an elevated or limited exposure to bright lights and noise has been found to influence people’s sleeping patterns, circadian rhythm, mood, metabolism, stress levels and mental performance.

Researchers at Jinan University and other institutes in China recently carried out a new study involving mice, exploring the possibility that the exposure to bright lights also influences eating behavior and body weight. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that bright light exposure suppresses food consumption in mice and can lead to weight loss, while also identifying neural processes that could support these light-induced changes in feeding behavior.

“Environmental light regulates nonimage-forming functions like feeding, and bright light therapy shows anti-obesity potential, yet its neural basis remains unclear,” wrote Wen Li, Xiaodan Huang and their colleagues in their paper. “We show that bright light treatment effectively reduces food intake and mitigates weight gain in mice through a visual circuit involving the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA).”

Scientists use string theory to crack the code of natural networks

For more than a century, scientists have wondered why physical structures like blood vessels, neurons, tree branches, and other biological networks look the way they do. The prevailing theory held that nature simply builds these systems as efficiently as possible, minimizing the amount of material needed. But in the past, when researchers tested these networks against traditional mathematical optimization theories, the predictions consistently fell short.

The problem, it turns out, was that scientists were thinking in one dimension when they should have been thinking in three. “We were treating these structures like wire diagrams,” Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) physicist Xiangyi Meng, Ph.D., explains. “But they’re not thin wires, they’re three-dimensional physical objects with surfaces that must connect smoothly.”

This month, Meng and colleagues published a paper in the journal Nature showing that physical networks in living systems follow rules borrowed from an unlikely source: string theory, the exotic branch of physics that attempts to explain the fundamental structure of the universe.

Pain-sensing neurons kick-start immune responses that drive allergies and asthma

Pain-sensing neurons in the gut kindle inflammatory immune responses that cause allergies and asthma, according to a new study by Weill Cornell Medicine. The findings, published in Nature, suggest that current drugs may not be as effective because they only address the immune component of these conditions, overlooking the contribution of neurons.

“Today’s blockbuster biologics are sometimes only 50% effective and when the treatments do work, they sometimes lose their efficacy over time,” said senior author Dr. David Artis, director of the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease and the Michael Kors Professor in Immunology at Weill Cornell.

While the idea may be new to the field, Dr. Artis has been thinking about the role the nervous system may play in allergies and asthma for about two decades. For example, many of the symptoms that characterize these conditions, like itching and wheezing, are known to be neuronally controlled. “That was one of the clues that prompted us to look closer for a connection,” Dr. Artis said.

Prenatal caffeine exposure induces autism-like behaviors in offspring under a high-fat diet via the gut microbiota-IL-17A-brain axis

This recently published research is compelling. “Microbiota-IL-17A-brain axis… induced ASD” both in and out of the womb has been our focus in learning about injury. ‘’ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651323013015 Interesting to see differences related to sex given much higher ASD rates in males, though that ratio has changed over the years.

You may be able to guess what kinds of things can affect microbiota-IL-17A-brain axis in infants, leading to neutrophil activity and brain inflammation in context of gut dysbiosis, a microbial predisposition to adverse reaction and injury. No research is published on this dynamic. Zero. microbiomevaccinesafetyproject Note: this is also the pathway explaining fever reducing symptoms in autism, a double-edged sword. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1C3ZjUoV8k/

Prenatal caffeine exposure (PCE) is a significant contributor to intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) in offspring, which has been linked to an increased susceptibility to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) later in life. Additionally, a high-fat diet (HFD) has been shown to exacerbate ASD-like behaviors, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we first noted in the rat model of IUGR induced by PCE that male PCE offspring exhibited typical ASD-like behaviors post-birth, in contrast to their female counterparts. The female PCE offspring demonstrated only reduced abilities in free exploration and spatial memory. Importantly, both male and female PCE offspring displayed ASD-like behaviors when exposed to HFD.

Algorithm matches drugs to glioblastoma’s diverse cell types, offering hope for individualized therapies

Researchers have developed a new computational approach that uncovers possible drugs for specific cellular targets for treating glioblastoma, a lethal brain tumor. This approach enabled them to predict more effective treatment combinations to fight the disease on an individualized basis.

This laboratory and computational research effort was led by scientists at Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“The cellular targets we identified could be key to effectively fighting a disease that has seen only one new targeted drug approved in the last two decades,” says Nagi G. Ayad, Ph.D., senior author, associate director for translational research, and professor of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi.

A stress-related chemical could initiate symptoms of depression

Depression, one of the most prevalent mental health disorders worldwide, is characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, impaired daily functioning and a loss of interest in daily activities, often along with altered sleeping and eating patterns. Past research findings suggest that stress can play a key role in the emergence of depressive symptoms, yet the biological processes via which it might increase the risk of depression remain poorly understood.

Researchers at Wenzhou Medical University, Capital Medical University and other institutes in China recently carried out a study investigating the biological processes that could link stress to the onset of depression. Their results, published in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that stress influences the levels of a chemical known as formaldehyde (FA) in specific parts of the brain, which could in turn disrupt their normal functioning, contributing to the emergence of depression.

Humans may be predisposed to understanding the complexities of music

There is a long-standing debate in the field of music cognition about the impact of musical training and whether formal training is needed to pick up higher-order tonal structures—the overarching harmonic framework of a piece of music.

New research from the University of Rochester, published in Psychological Science, offers fresh insight into that discussion. The findings suggest that nonmusicians have a surprisingly sophisticated ear when it comes to music.

“Formal training in music—including music theory—fine-tunes the ear to pick up tonal patterns in music, like tonic, dominant, and cadences,” says Elise Piazza, an assistant professor in the Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Neuroscience and the senior author of the study. “But it turns out that with zero training, people are actually picking up on those structures just from listening to music over the lifespan.”

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