#dendrites

#dendrites

"I can look at an object in the world around me, but I can also close my eyes and imagine the object," says Varun Wadia, highlighting the dual capability of visual perception and imagination.

To characterize CREs and TFs for neocortical ExNs, we used Arpp21-Gfp or Fezf2-Gfp transgenic mice and enriched GFP-expressing neocortical upper layer (L2-4) intratelencephalic (IT) neurons or deep layer (L5-6) predominantly extratelencephalic (ET) neurons, respectively, from neonatal mice (postnatal day (PD) 0), an age at which neocortical ExN identity and connectivity are established.

Dopamine is one of the most extensively studied neurotransmitters, chemicals that convey signals from cell to cell. It's the one with the highest profile outside neuroscience: often known as the 'pleasure chemical', it's depicted as the hit of reward that people get from recreational drugs or scrolling through social media. That's a gross simplification of what dopamine does; on that, researchers agree.

Anyone living with schizophrenia understands the true limitations of current treatment options. Antipsychotics remain the single leading treatment for the disorder, and they are riddled with undesirable side effects. Weight gain, tardive dyskinesia, and excessive drowsiness are a few. Much research is devoted to expanding the range of medication options, and few academics have pursued other avenues. However, there is a possibility that treatment for schizophrenia can be approached through cellular methods if long-term research validates early signs of hope.

If you're going to prioritize one thing for your brain health, make it this: regular aerobic exercise. Multiple large-scale studies show that aerobic exercise doesn't just keep your heart healthy-it directly impacts your brain structure. One year of aerobic exercise in older adults led to significantly larger hippocampal volumes and better spatial memory. Other trials documented that exercise actually slows age-related gray matter volume loss.

The human brain is engineered to ignore most of what it sees and hears, according to the neuroscientists I interviewed for the audio original Viral Voices. If that's the case, how are you supposed to make a memorable impression? The empowering news is that if you understand how the brain works, what it discards, and what it pays attention to, you'll be far more persuasive than you've ever imagined. Persuasive people have influence in their personal and professional lives.

Artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning is making a difference in assistive technology to help restore movement for the paralyzed. A new study in the American Institute of Physics journal APL Bioengineering shows how AI has the potential to restore lower-limb functions in those with severe spinal cord injuries (SCIs) by identifying patterns in brain signals captured noninvasively via electroencephalography (EEG).

This could open up some interesting possibilities for therapeutic interventions for depression-like behaviors or maladaptive changes in motivational behaviors down the road where microglia are known to play a really important role.

They created an artificial 'mental map', with pleasantness along one axis and bodily reactions along the other, and charted how the brain responded while watching clips from films. The results revealed clear groupings in the way that our brains represent emotion - with guilt, anger and disgust in one corner and happiness, satisfaction and pride in the other.

Neuroscientists have a name for the brain network that fires up when you're not focused on an external task: the default mode network, or DMN. It's the constellation of regions - the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and angular gyrus among them - that hums to life when you daydream, reflect on yourself, or think about other people's mental states.

There are lots of reasons why relationships fall apart; all kinds of incompatibilities can doom romance. Some are trivial, but occasionally there might be something more profound at the root of an estrangement. Recently, the concept of the "frontal lobe breakup" appeared in popular culture. The idea is that the final stage of development in the executive regions of the brain-the frontal lobes-changes someone's perspective about their relationship. The onset of advanced cognitive skills in one partner creates a gap in maturity too big to bridge.

Tumours lure and then hijack nearby sensory neurons to boost their own growth. The cancer cells use these neurons to send a signal to the brain that subdues the activity of immune cells around the tumour, which allows it to grow unchecked. When researchers deactivated these neurons in mice with lung cancer, they saw "a huge, dramatic reduction" in tumour growth - more than 50% - says cancer immunologist and study co-author Chengcheng Jin.

I am a worrier, and have been for most of my life. At some point, someone dear and smart teased me that I worry about the wrong things. The things that hit me, she noted, were never the things I worried about. For a while that left me feeling like an incompetent worrier-until my research caught up. I realized that the things I worry about often don't end up hurting me precisely because worrying helps me diffuse them ahead of time.

N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) are glutamate-gated ion channels that mediate excitatory neurotransmission throughout the brain1. As obligate heterotetramers, their activation requires the binding of both glycine and glutamate2. Although recent structural studies have provided insights into endogenous receptors from select brain regions3, most previous work has relied on recombinant receptors and engineered constructs, which limits our understanding of native NMDARs across the whole brain.

It might come as a surprise to learn that the brain responds to training in much the same way as our muscles, even though most of us never think about it that way. Clear thinking, focus, creativity, and good judgment are built through challenge, when the brain is asked to stretch beyond routine rather than run on autopilot. That slight mental discomfort is often the sign that the brain is actually being trained, a lot like that good workout burn in your muscles.

We've always said that SuperAgers show that the aging brain can be biologically active, adaptable, flexible, but we didn't know why. This is biological proof that their brains are more plastic, and a real discovery that shows that neurogenesis of young neurons in the hippocampus may be a contributing factor.