Tag: "synapses" at biology news

Researchers reveal structure of protein altered in autism

...stickiness’ that enables them to associate so that synapses form and have the capacity for neurotransmission,”...hen a mutant neuroligin fails to properly align at synapses helps explain why the autism spectrum disorders are manifested in subtle behavioral abnormalities th...

Newborn neurons like to hang with the 'in' crowd

...r or dendrite. A typical neuron sports about 7,000 synapses through which it stays in touch with roughly 1,000...ese cells make proper connections, form functional synapses and integrate into the rest of the brain," says postdoctoral fellow Nicolas Toni, Ph.D., who headed ...

New Brandeis research sheds light on memory by erasing it

...esearch involved electrically stimulating neuronal synapses to strengthen them, a process known as long-term p...ce may be conditions like epilepsy, which involves synapses that have become overly strengthened. The new research shows how synapses can be weakened by attacki...

Deconstructing brain wiring, one neuron at a time

...ell without stopping. Second, they cross different synapses ?the specialized junctions between nerve cells - at different rates, crossing bigger, stronger synapses faster than smaller, weaker ones. Together these attributes make these viruses unable to determine e...

Rare cell prevents rampant brain activity

... and anxiety. But despite the fact that excitatory synapses are much more common than their inhibitory counterparts, the system is generally kept in a state of equilibrium. Just how the brain manages this feat is a puzzle to scientists. Scientists at Karolinska Institutet and the Brain Mind Institute in S...

2 brains -- 1 thought

... the number of connections and the strength of the synapses should be minimal. "Applied to a real network, one could for example analyse which structural optimisation principles function in evolution," says Timme. The dynamics of a number of very simple networks that generate repetitive patterns - like the in...

Cold sore virus might play role in Alzheimer's disease

...e structure and function of the synapse. Damage to synapses is one of the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease. Another possibility is that the body's immune response against herpes somehow damages the brain, and that such damage is worse in people with the ApoE-4 copy of the gene. Earlier this year Feder...

Motor protein plays key role in connecting neurons

...ht direction. Cells eventually communicate through synapses at the end of these cellular projections. "During early development, axons need to grow, they need to find a target, they need to decide how long to grow, which direction to grow. Eventually they will form a synapse," says Dr. Xiong, who is dissec...

Drug treatment improves learning in mice with Down syndrome symptoms, Stanford/Packard study shows

...ing to occur, but that we’re instead strengthening synapses through some type of long-lasting neuronal adaptation," said Garner. A key component of enduring neural change associated with memory is known as long-term potentiation. In general terms, once a threshold of activating signals has been achieved, a...

Brain works more chaotically than previously thought

...nd ancillary cells. There are no dendrites or even synapses here. "So it is not a place where we would expect ...ndrites. Here, the information is passed on at the synapses to the receptor cells. "We think, however, that on their way though the grey matter the axons probab...

Dopamine used to prompt nerve tissue to regrow

...gs that the material stimulates the reformation of synapses in addition to regrowth. "A successful nerve regeneration will require the nerve to synapse with the target organ," Wang said. "Since we've written this paper, we've also been able to get the nerves to form extensive synapses, which is a step in ...

Transplanted brain cells hold promise for Parkinson's disease

...rvived. Also, transplanted neural cells had formed synapses to communicate with each other and ultimately the striatum, the portion of the brain dopaminergic cells act on to control movement. "When we looked at the transplanted stem cells, they had survived, had differentiated into neurons and showed some ...

Tracing the formation of long-term memory

...e function of a protein critical to making the new synapses associated with long-term memory....

Fast-freeze snapshot yields new picture of nerve-muscle junction

...veloped the high-pressure freeze technique to view synapses while working in the laboratory of coauthor Jean-L..., causing synaptic components to get misplaced and synapses to take on a wrinkly appearance. While slow freezing can create ice crystals that tear cell structu...

Most important actors in the growth process of neurons identified

...ecognition of objectives, and finally formation of synapses in order to transmit stimuli. Unraveling precisely how this whole process works is important for understanding the development of the brain and for helping develop therapies for diseases that are the consequence of damaged or diseased neurons. The...

When nerve cells can't make contact

...- provided the receiving cell has "aerials" on its synapses - receptors that bind the chemical signals. The scientists speculated that this process could be disrupted if the nerve cells have no neuroligins. At the time of Bourgeron TM 's discovery, Nils Brose and Frederique Varoqueaux, brain researchers at ...

Septum keeps neurons in synch, can reduce epileptic seizures by 90 percent

...that excites the brain's neurons and activates the synapses between the neurons to produce status epilepticus, in which sustained seizures occur. The rats received diazepam three hours later to interrupt the seizures, but became chronically epileptic, experiencing 3-5 seizures weekly. The researchers then us...

First study to show how immune cells 'speak' to each other in vivo

...nd functional significance of mature immunological synapses in vivo during antiviral immune responses. The fi...rg . WHY: The mechanism of how immunological synapses "speak" to each other in vivo has not been observed prior to this research. Although formal proof o...

Nanowire arrays can detect signals along individual neurons

...urnal Science. "We describe the first artificial synapses between nanoelectronic devices and individual mamm... detect neurotransmitters, the chemicals that leap synapses to carry electrical impulses from one neuron to another. "This work could have a revolutionary imp...

Blood flow in brain takes a twist, affecting views of Alzheimer's

...ng. She said that astrocytes physically touch both synapses ?the spaces between neurons that are crucial to brain activity ?and blood vessels. In fact, "footprints" of astrocytes are literally all over blood vessels in the brain: Portions of astrocytes known as "astrocytic endfeet" wrap around nearly all the ...

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