Impulse in Biological News

Protein that regulates hormones critical to women's health found in pituitary

... neurotransmitters and hormones within nerve terminals. When an electrical impulse from one cell reaches a nerve terminal, it triggers the release of ... IV tunes the triggering command and determines whether the same electrical impulse will let a large or small amount of hormone out of the nerve terminal." ...

Thinking makes it so: Science extends reach of prosthetic arms

... the patient wants to close his hand a hand that is no longer there the impulse travels down the nerve, into his chest and causes the chest muscle to ... longer there. Thats not really surprising, because the brain receives an impulse from a nerve that used to go to the arm. The brain doesnt know the nerve ...

Women more depressed and men more impulsive with reduced serotonin functioning

... is also known that people with MDD are frequently found to have impaired impulse control. A new study being published in the September 15th issue of ... to men, while men show a higher prevalence of alcoholism, ADHD and impulse control disorders. John H. Krystal, M.D., Editor of Biological Psychiatry ...

UBC researchers develop new method to study gambling addictions

... their sugar pellet profits. The study found that rodents treated with drugs that reduced their levels of serotonin levels associated with impulse control in humans dramatically reduced their ability to play the odds. A drug that reduced dopamine levels associated with pleasure in humans ...

From the glass to the brain in 6 minutes

... to drive, but does not induce severe intoxication. In the MRI scanner, the nuclei of atoms in brain tissue were stimulated by a high-frequency impulse and the signal transmitted during the return to the initial condition was received. The spectral properties of this signal can be analyzed, allowing ...

Genetic risk factors identified for sudden cardiac death

... increased arrhythmia risk is the QT interval in the ECG," Stefan Kb explained. The QT interval describes the time span needed to send the electrical impulse into the heart ventricles and then to recharge. A prolonged QT interval can depending on the underlying disease increase the risk of arrhythmias ...

Revealing new applications for carbon nanomaterials in hydrogen storage

... carbon nanomaterials have been demonstrated so clearly and the mechanism that makes this behaviour possible has been understood, we expect a strong impulse on putting this effect to use in practical applications.", says Professor Rajeev Ahuja. "Certainly, our findings have the strongest impact in the ...

Stress disrupts human thinking, but the brain can bounce back

... Conor Liston, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Rockefeller and Cornell, who led the research. A response-reversal requires the brain to override the habitual impulse to first look left instead of right for oncoming cars. An American in Venice might require an attention-shift, by contrast, to seek out boats instead ...

A BBVA Foundation project comes up with a system enabling detection of cetacean hearing loss

... the evoked potentials registered through the top of the skull. When an animal hears a sound, its brain registers this vibration through an electrical impulse that can be detected with simple suction cup electrodes. These electrical pulses are called auditory evoked potentials or auditory brainstem ...

A screening strategy using zebrafish targets genes that protect against hearing loss

... in the inner ear or changes in water pressure in the fishs environment) causes the stereocilia to tilt to one side, generating an electrical impulse that travels to the brain. The researchers first set out to identify genes that may be involved in how hair cells respond to ototoxic medicines. ...

AAAS announces winners of 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Awards

... the label smart does not prevent them from underperforming. Rather, it may actually be a cause of their underperformance. The story noted that the impulse to offer praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. Roylance called the story a terrifically written exploration of a ...

Study reveals possible genetic risk for fetal alcohol disorders

... characterized by profound mental retardation in its most severe form, but which is also associated with deficits in learning, attention, memory and impulse control. By identifying a genetic marker that might signal susceptibility to these more subtle fetal alcohol-induced problems, the research fills ...

Racing neurons control whether we stop or go

... New research reveals that a similar race goes on in our brains, with impulse control being the big winner. "The research provides new insights into ... If it is unsuccessful, the subject goes ahead. In individuals with impulse control problems, ‘stop?more often loses the race." The findings are ...

Aggression-related gene weakens brain's impulse control circuits

... brain structures, a hyperactive alarm center and under-active impulse control circuitry. The study identifies neural mechanisms by which this ... among other areas. Volume of an area important for motivation and impulse regulation (orbital frontal cortex) was increased by 14 percent in men ...

Man's best friend lends insight into human evolution

... fear were altered ?and the same thing may have occurred in human evolution. Chimps, he says, are constrained 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 ...

Mechanism of nicotine's learning effects explored

... for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Such neurotransmitters are the chemical signals that 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 ...

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

... and are set in motion by specific frequencies of sound. We hear this sound because this motion 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. ...

Scientists produce neurons from human skin

... that in the days following the start of the experiment, the cells began producing markers and molecules 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 ...

Brain works more chaotically than previously thought

... the neuroscientist explains. Yet it is in the white matter that the scientists have made 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 ...

St. Jude finds clues to hearing loss from chemotherapy

... of hair cells in the inner part of the ear. These cells sprout extremely fine hairs that move in 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 ...

Electric fish in Africa could be example of evolution in action

... organ in their tails to sense their surroundings and communicate with other fish. Each species of mormyrid 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' ...

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

... sodium, potassium, or calcium into and out of the cell. The precisely controlled passage of ions generates 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 ...

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

... to understand how the NPS system works. Thus far, the team's research suggests it acts much like 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 ...

Why nerve cells work faster than the theory allows

... the threshold potentials allows the cells to ignore slowly varying stimuli. The cells continuously 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 ...

Engineered mouse mimics cognitive aspects of schizophrenia

... in schizophrenia. Dopamine is a major neurotransmitter in the brain--a chemical messenger that one 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 ...

New battery technology helps stimulate nerves

... the heart of Parkinson's, epilepsy and incontinence. "The idea is that whenever you have a broken 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, ...

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

... of a nerve impulse. Historically, the glial cell or astrocyte was considered to be a support cell 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 ...

How fish hear and make sounds at same time

... at the exact moment when the fish vocalizes, leaving the ear sensitive to outside noises during the 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 ...

The synapse is a shotgun

... technique could offer a powerful tool for understanding neurological disease, such as myasthenia gravis, 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 ...

Discovery of New Dopamine Action May Yield Alternative Psychiatric Drugs

... he explained. Neurotransmitters such as dopamine are chemical messengers that one neuron launches 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 ...

Supercomputer Dedicated To Bioengineering, Computational Biology Installed

... computational speed with some of our models -- some are memory limited," said McCulloch. "For example, 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 ...

Key Trigger Of Opioid Withdrawal Symptoms Found

... produce a hyperexcitability in the neurons. Neurotransmitters are the molecular ammunition that one 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 ...