impulse

Key Trigger Of Opioid Withdrawal Symptoms Found

...ne neuron fires at its neighbor to trigger a nerve impulse in the neighbor. Propagation of such nerve impulses through the networks of neurons in the brain is the basis of all neural activity. Transporter molecules are the proteins that retrieve neurotransmitter molecules from the spaces between neurons afte...

Supercomputer Dedicated To Bioengineering, Computational Biology Installed

...le, our models of the propogation of an electrical impulse thorough the heart wall require us to generate matricies with millions of individual cells, and our ability to solve such problems is limited by the memory available. This new cluster will enable completely new simulations of the heart and other biol...

Discovery of New Dopamine Action May Yield Alternative Psychiatric Drugs

...aunches at receptors on another to trigger a nerve impulse in the receiving neuron. Receptors are protein switches on the surfaces of neurons that recognize neurotransmitters and translate their signals into a cellular response. Dopamine exerts its functions in the brain by binding to two broad classes of re...

The synapse is a shotgun

...avis, a common disorder in which a defect in nerve impulse transmission results in muscle weakness. In this and other neurological diseases, "there may be an anomaly at the receptor level, but it is impossible to pinpoint the problem with existing techniques. With our modeling technique, we can explore the d...

How fish hear and make sounds at same time

... millisecond gaps when the fish is silent. Once an impulse for vocalization ends, the brain decreases its messages to the ear, which in turn makes the ear more receptive to external sound again. In fact, for an instant following a vocalization, the ear may actually become more sensitive than it was prior to ...

Penn study finds direct role for glial cells in brain cross-talk

...ell and to play no active role in regulating nerve impulse transmission. However, recent research by Haydon and other investigators has indicated that glial cells do produce chemical transmitters called gliotransmitters and that these chemical signals are recognized by the neurons. The studies that have sho...

New battery technology helps stimulate nerves

...en nerve connection, you can supply the electrical impulse to complete the circuit," West explains. The microstimulator was developed by a consortium including UW-Madison's Organosilicon Research Center, Argonne National Laboratory, Advanced Bionics Corp., the Alfred Mann Foundation and Quallion, LLC. The d...

Engineered mouse mimics cognitive aspects of schizophrenia

...neuron launches at its neighbor to trigger a nerve impulse in the receiving neuron. The major antipsychotic drugs are believed to "dial down" the dopamine machinery by blocking receptors for dopamine on the surface of neurons. Also, amphetamines, which release dopamine, are known to aggravate schizophrenic ...

Aggression-related gene weakens brain's impulse control circuits

...tures, a hyperactive alarm center and under-active impulse control circuitry. The study identifies neural mec...as. Volume of an area important for motivation and impulse regulation (orbital frontal cortex) was increased by 14 percent in men only. Although the reasons ar...

Why nerve cells work faster than the theory allows

... increase their threshold so that in many cases no impulse is initiated at all. The fast activation of action potentials, on the other hand, helps the cells to transmit fast changing signals, even with high precision. According to the Hodgkin-Huxley model, the cells would lack the ability to do this. "Man...

Studies suggest new brain protein may help in treating schizophrenia, insomnia and anxiety

...e an excitatory neurotransmitter that initiates an impulse by the receiving neuron. Currently, the team is looking at whether natural mutations in the genes of NPS and its receptor might be associated with mental disorders and developing animal models that lack parts of the NPS system in order to better unde...

Gatekeeping: Penn researchers find new way to open ion channels in cell membranes

...enerates the electrical currents that enable nerve impulse transmission, hormone secretion, and muscle contraction and relaxation. When there are changes to the channel, such as by mutations in a channel gene, disease can result. For example, mutations in some channel genes cause cardiac arrhythmias, includi...

Electric fish in Africa could be example of evolution in action

...ormyrid gives off a single characteristic electric impulse resulting in the flash of signals, indicating, for example, aggression, courtship and fear. While the fish may be able to understand other species' impulses, said Arnegard, "They seem to only choose to mate with other fish having the same signature w...

St. Jude finds clues to hearing loss from chemotherapy

... response to sound waves and set up the electrical impulse that goes into the brain. These are the same cells damaged in adults by prolonged exposure to loud noise. "In the future we'd like to be able to prevent the loss of these hair cells or trigger their re-growth with some form of pharmacological or gene...

Brain works more chaotically than previously thought

...e a remarkable discovery. As soon as an electrical impulse runs through an axon cable, tiny bubbles containing glutamate travel to the axon membrane and release their content into the brain. Glutamate is one of the most important neurotransmitters, being released when signal transmission occurs at synapses. ...

Scientists produce neurons from human skin

...olecules associated with the transmission of nerve impulse between neurons. "This suggests the beginning of synapse formation between neurons," points out Professor Berthod. In the short term, this breakthrough might have an impact in the field of neuroscience research. "Producing neurons from skin cells ...

Racing neurons control whether we stop or go

...ls that a similar race goes on in our brains, with impulse control being the big winner. "The research provi...ssful, the subject goes ahead. In individuals with impulse control problems, ‘stop?more often loses the race." The findings are some of the first to bridge ...

Study shows isolation of stem cells may lead to a treatment for hearing loss

...ion induces the hair cell to release an electrical impulse which passes along the auditory nerve to the brain. If the sound is too loud, the hair cells are damaged and no longer send signals to the brain. Severely damaged hair cells do not repair themselves nor do they regenerate naturally. While furt...

Mechanism of nicotine's learning effects explored

... one neuron launches at another to trigger a nerve impulse in the receiving neuron. In their studies, Mansvelder and colleagues found that by activating acetylcholine receptors, nicotine affects a process called “spike-timing-dependent potentiation?that governs changes in strength of signaling connections...

Man's best friend lends insight into human evolution

...nstrained in solving cooperative problems by their impulse to fear more dominant individuals and behave aggressively toward more subordinate ones. "Taken together," Hare writes, "the results on chimpanzee cooperation and their use of social cues support the hypothesis that evolution in human social probl...