circuit

Examination of internal 'wiring' of yeast, worm, and fly reveals conserved circuits

First-of-its-kind analysis published in the Feb. 8 PNAS supports the concept of a basic wiring diagram for all eukaryotes. Researchers in California, Israel, and Germany have compared three distantly related species ?baker's yeast, a worm, and the fruit fly ?and reported that protein "wiring" connections in one species are often conserved in all three. This first-of-its-kind analysis of t...

Brain-injury rehabilitation depends on acetylcholine circuitry

The ability of the brain to recover from such injury as stroke or trauma depends on a particular circuitry of neurons that "talk" to one another using the brain chemical acetylcholine, researchers led by James Conner and Mark Tuszynski in the Neural repair Group at UCSD have discovered. Their finding in rats could help enhance rehabilitation to recover from such injuries by leading to the develop...

Depression gene may weaken mood-regulating circuit

A brain scan study suggests that a suspect gene may increase susceptibility to anxiety and depression* by weakening a circuit for processing negative emotion. People with the depression-linked gene variant showed less gray matter and weaker connections in the mood-regulating circuit. How well the circuit was connected accounted for nearly 30 percent of their anxious temperament, researchers at th...

Deep sleep short-circuits brain's grid of connectivity

In the human brain, cells talk to one another through the routine exchange of electrical signals. But when people fall into a deep sleep, the higher regions of the brain - regions that during waking hours are a bustling grid of neural dialogue - apparently lose their ability to communicate effectively, causing consciousness to fade. Writing today (Sept. 30) in the journal Science, a team o...

Nicotine triggers the same brain reward circuitry as opiates

In experiments with mice, researchers have found that nicotine triggers the same neural pathways that give opiates such as heroin their addictively rewarding properties--including associating an environment with the drug's reward. However, unlike opiates, nicotine does not directly activate the brain's opiate receptors, but activates the natural opioid reward pathway in the brain. The rese...

New study to explore cellular circuitry

Project's goal to empower future drug designAs part of a $4.88 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), molecular biologists from the University of Rochester Medical Center will join a team seeking to create the first complete wiring diagram of a living cell. By wiring diagram, researchers mean a detailed model, not only of the cell's genes and their function, but also of the int...

Aggression-related gene weakens brain's impulse control circuits

A version of a gene previously linked to impulsive violence appears to weaken brain circuits that regulate impulses, emotional memory and thinking in humans, researchers at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have found. Brain scans revealed that people with this version ?especially males ?tended to have relatively smaller emotion-related brain str...

Hap1 protein links circulating insulin to brain circuits that regulate feeding behavior in mice

Researchers have discovered how the protein Hap1, which is abundant in the brain's hypothalamus, serves as the link between circulating insulin in the blood and the neural circuitry that controls feeding behavior in mice. Illumination of the neural pathway used by hormones to regulate appetite and eating behavior could eventually provide new drug targets for treating eating disorders and o...

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

Research into three major scientific and technological challenges is to receive a major boost from the application of e-Science and grid computing. The challenges are, understanding the brain, mapping the detailed environmental impact of traffic and designing future generation nano-scale electronic circuits. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and other funding p...

Brain's 'gambling circuitry' identified

From gamblers playing blackjack to investors picking stocks, humans make a wide range of decisions that require gauging risk versus reward. However, laboratory studies have not been able to unequivocally determine how the very basic information-processing "subcortical" regions of the brain function in processing risk and reward. Now, Steven Quartz and colleagues at the California Institut...

Zinc plays important role in brain circuitry

To the multitude of substances that regulate neuronal signaling in the brain and spinal cord add a new key player: zinc. By engineering a mouse with a mutation affecting a neuronal zinc target, researchers have demonstrated a central role for zinc in modulating signaling among the neurons. Significantly, they found the mutant mouse shows the same exaggerated response to noise as children with the...

Emotional control circuit of brain's fear response discovered

Columbia University Medical Center researchers have identified the neurocircuit that controls the brain's response to fear. Results suggest that it may be possible to understand psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety or depression, from the underlying neurophysiology ?workings of the brain. They accomplished this using an adapted version of an attention control test, and a neuroimaging m...

Common algae helps illustrate mammalian brain electrical circuitry

Mice whose brain cells respond to a flash of light are providing insight into the complexities of the sense of smell and may ultimately yield a better understanding of how the human brain works. Investigators at Duke University Medical Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have engineered a strain of mice whose olfactory brain cells "fire" when exposed to light. This was accomplis...

Brain's reward circuit activity ebbs and flows with a woman's hormonal cycle

Fluctuations in sex hormone levels during women's menstrual cycles affect the responsiveness of their brains' reward circuitry, an imaging study at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has revealed. While women were winning rewards, their circuitry was more active if they were in a menstrual phase preceding ovulation and dominated...

'Short-circuit' found in ocean circulation

Scientists have discovered how ocean circulation is working in the current that flows around Antarctica by tracing the path of helium from underwater volcanoes. The details are published in Nature this week. The team, led by Alberto Naveira Garabato of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (formerly based at the University of East Anglia), has discovered a 'short-circuit' in the ci...