Tag: "circuits" at biology news

Do fruit flies have free will?

... use genetics to localize and understand the brain circuits responsible for the spontaneous behavior. This step could lead directly to the development of robots with the capacity for spontaneous nonrandom behavior and may help combating disorders leading to compromised spontaneous behavioral variability in hu...

Deconstructing brain wiring, one neuron at a time

...cture of the brain and then correlate these neural circuits with such brain functions as perception and behavior. But these circuits are difficult to unravel because dozens of different neuronal types are entangled within a precisely...

A 'traffic light' for neurons means 'go' for improving brain research

... It is a novel means for experimenting with neural circuits and could eventually lead to therapies for some di...uron control is to begin experimenting with neural circuits to determine why unhealthy ones fail and how healthy ones work. In patients with Parkinson's dise...

Enhancing activity of marijuana-like chemicals in brain helps treat

...ntified a new way of potentially manipulating the circuits that are malfunctioning in this disease." Malen... that the two types of cells formed complementary circuits in the brain. One of the circuits is thought to be involved in activating motion, while the othe...

Insomnia drug can improve brain function

...he mechanism may be due to an activation of neural circuits in the brain that control movement and verbal expression, but that the lesions that occurred due to oxygen deprivation may have been too severe to allow spontaneous speech. They conclude that single patient trials can be a logical approach to identif...

Scientists find potential 'off-switch' for HIV virus

...t HIV and other viruses that possess these genetic circuits within their own DNA. "SirT1 and related proce...be wonderful to learn more about how these genetic circuits work so that we can enter a new age of drug design," he said. "Rather than just giving a static drug...

Prenatal cocaine's lasting cellular effects

... in humans -- caused specific alterations in brain circuits that use the neurotransmitter dopamine. Additionally, these cocaine-exposed offspring showed attention problems as well as insensitivity to stimulants like amphetamine, suggesting that cocaine exposure had altered the development of the dopamine path...

Scientists to track impact of Asian dust and pollution on clouds, weather, climate change

... olfactory system not only involves complex neural circuits but also has a behavioral component. "The perception of smell is quite complex," Ehlers said. "The brain can decode thousands of smells that enter the nose, discriminating even the slightest scent and often conjuring up vivid memories. So we wante...

Common algae helps illustrate mammalian brain electrical circuitry

... olfactory system not only involves complex neural circuits but also has a behavioral component. "The perception of smell is quite complex," Ehlers said. "The brain can decode thousands of smells that enter the nose, discriminating even the slightest scent and often conjuring up vivid memories. So we wante...

Cells use 'noise' to make cell-fate decisions

...research provides a systems-level view of how gene circuits work as a whole," he said. Dr. Süel said the ne...cover the theoretical design principles of genetic circuits and what role interactions between distinct circuits play in regulating complex biological processes...

MIT: Pulsing light silences overactive neurons

... than excitation, because you can shut down neural circuits that are behaving erratically," he said. Many e...ividual neurons. Learning more about the neural circuits involved in epilepsy could help scientists develop devices that can predict when a seizure is about ...

Smokers quit after damage to brain region

...ehaviors may have an equally strong hold on neural circuits for pleasure. The senior authors of the study are Antoine Bechara and Hanna Damasio, both faculty in the year-old Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, in collaboration with graduate students Nasir Naqvi, who was ...

Dopamine used to prompt nerve tissue to regrow

...ed him crazy. His idea was simple: Because neural circuits use electrical signals often conducted by neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) to communicate between the brain and the rest of the body, he could build neurotransmitters into the material used to repair a broken circuit. The neurotransmitters cou...

NHGRI aims to make DNA sequencing faster, more cost effective

...thods, along with on-chip silicon-based electronic circuits and circuit techniques that amplify and isolate their various electrical signals. This group will also design a dipole-sensing methodology, which in principle can distinguish signals from each of the DNA bases. Arrays of nanopores will be constructed...

On the golf tee or pitcher's mound, brain dooms motion to inconsistency

...ieve new kinds of computing by building artificial circuits modeled on the brain. But Shenoy says the research simply set out to explain variability in movement. "This is basic science," Shenoy says. "We ask questions because we want to know." The study could help resolve a question about human nature, ho...

A simple feedback resistor switch keeps latent HIV from awakening

...anage this problem by encoding intricate repressor circuits that efficiently block transcription. But animal viruses, specifically HIV, appear to lack similar repressor circuits. In a new study, published online in the open access journal PLoS Biology, Leor Weinberger and Thomas Shenk propose that some animal...

High dopamine transporter levels not correlated with ADHD

...ry of ADHD is that there is a dysfunction in brain circuits that depend on the neurotransmitter dopamine to modulate attention, motivation, and interest. If, for example, ADHD subjects have elevated levels of dopamine transporters ?proteins on dopamine-producing cells that take up excess dopamine ?they could ...

Fly's courtship sheds light on the formation of innate behaviors

... genes influence the development and use of neural circuits that control a specific set of mating behaviors in the fruit fly, researchers have provided new insight into how instinctual behaviors ?those that are not based on prior experience ?arise in the developing nervous system. The work is reported by Jean...

The brain, traffic and nano-circuits -- e-Science takes on major challenges

...gy and tools to allow designers of tiny electronic circuits to meet the very demanding challenges created by future nano-scale electronic components. These components will be so small that their behaviour will be highly variable, governed by individual atoms rather than the average behaviour of large colle...

Snakes' virtual glasses, leopard spots and all-optical transistors

... potential to serve as a building block in optical circuits and optical versions of microelectronic devices. Multiple Choice Makes Better Tests Michael Scott, Tim Stelzer, and Gary Gladding Physical Review Special Topics ?Physics Education Research http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRSTPER/v2/e020102 Mult...

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