Yale scientists have solved a puzzle of the immune system: how antibodies enter the nervous system to control viral infections. Their finding may have implications for the prevention and treatment of a range of conditions, including herpes and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been linked to the Zika virus. (more…)
The “munchies,” or that uncontrollable urge to eat after using marijuana, appear to be driven by neurons in the brain that are normally involved in suppressing appetite, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal Nature.
Lead author Tamas Horvath and his colleagues set out to monitor the brain circuitry that promotes eating by selectively manipulating the cellular pathway that mediates marijuana’s action on the brain, using transgenic mice. (more…)
Twenty years after the hormone leptin was found to regulate metabolism, appetite, and weight through brain cells called neurons, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that the hormone also acts on other types of cells to control appetite.
Published in the June 1 issue of Nature Neuroscience, the findings could lead to development of treatments for metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes. (more…)
Researchers were able to improve walking and prolong survival in a mouse model by tweaking potassium levels
By boosting the ability of a specific type of cell to absorb potassium in the brain, UCLA researchers were able to improve walking and prolong survival in a mouse model of Huntington’s disease.
Their findings, published March 30 in the online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, could point to new drug targets for treating the devastating disease, which strikes one in every 20,000 Americans. (more…)
That fruit fly joining you just moments after you poured that first glass of cabernet, has just used its poppy-seed-sized brain to conduct a finely-choreographed search, one that’s been described for the first time by researchers at the University of Washington.
The search mission is another example of fruit flies executing complex behaviors with very little “computational” power, their brains having 100,000 neurons compared to house flies with 300,000 neurons and humans with 100 billion. (more…)
There was an opening ceremony on Feb. 5 for the Yale Institute for Network Science (YINS), dedicated to exploring fundamental properties of networks as they appear throughout the biological, physical, and social sciences.
The interdisciplinary institute will be led by co-directors Nicholas Christakis, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science, and Daniel Spielman, the Henry Ford II Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics.
Christakis and Spielman recently met with YaleNews to discuss the nature of networks and the institute’s mission. The following is an edited version of the conversation. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Fish, unlike humans, can regenerate nerve connections and recover normal mobility following an injury to their spinal cord. Now, University of Missouri researchers have discovered how the sea lamprey, an eel-like fish, regrows the neurons that comprise the long nerve “highways” that link the brain to the spinal cord. Findings may guide future efforts to promote recovery in humans who have suffered spinal cord injuries.
“There is a lot of attention to why, following a spinal cord injury, neurons regenerate in lower vertebrates, such as the sea lamprey, and why they don’t in higher vertebrates, such as humans,” said Andrew McClellan, professor of biological sciences in the College of Arts and Science and director of the UM Spinal Cord Injury Research Program (SCIRP). (more…)
Physical activity reorganizes the brain so that its response to stress is reduced and anxiety is less likely to interfere with normal brain function, according to a research team based at Princeton University.
The researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience that when mice allowed to exercise regularly experienced a stressor — exposure to cold water — their brains exhibited a spike in the activity of neurons that shut off excitement in the ventral hippocampus, a brain region shown to regulate anxiety. (more…)
