( National Institute of Mental Health in...)Brain Cells Activity: New Treatment Target for Psychiatric Diseases,Health

National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md.

"What we have found is neuregulin-1 can regulate GABA release from these neurons and if the GABA is released here that may play a role in controlling the output of this neuron," Dr. Mei says, pointing to an illustration of pyramid-shaped neurons that looks like a high-tech switchboard with information coming in from all angles.

Pyramidal neurons get information from nearby interneurons, integrate it, then decide what message to move forward. "This pyramidal neuron receives inhibitory input and excitatory input, and neuregulin-1 can regulate both," says Dr. Mei.

They nicely balance input in most people, enabling folks to balance their checking accounts and suppress the urge to run naked down the street.

In 2006, University of Pennsylvania researchers reported in Nature Medicine an altered signaling pathway for neuregulin-1 and ErbB4 genes in the brains of schizophrenics. Dr. Mei's findings show that these factors associated with a schizophrenic brain have at least two places to act.

"There is a ton of evidence that when inhibitory synapses, such as GABA, go wrong, the symptoms of mice and rats look similar to those of schizophrenia in people," he says.

Mounting evidence suggests that problems with the excitatory and inhibitory synapses regulated by neuregulin-1 result in other problems as well: Excess excitation results in mind-rattling seizures and excess inhibition in depression, as examples.

"If this neuron is too excited, people may get manic or have seizures," says Dr. Mei. "Patients with schizophrenia, for example, show symptoms that implicate alterations in inhibitory neurotransmission in addition to excitatory neurotransmission."

Dr. Mei co-authored a companion paper in Neuron with scientists at Cold Spring Harbor in New York that provides yet another link between neuregulin-1, its receptor ErbB4
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