health 66

"We recall memories all the time," said senior author Dr. Daoyun Ji, associate professor of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor. "For example, I can recall the route I take from home to work every morning, but what are the brain signals at this moment when I hold this memory in my mind?" Studying the workings of the brain in people is difficult, so scientists have turned to the laboratory rat. They have learned that when the animal is in a particular place, neurons in the hippocampus, appropriately called place cells, generate pulses of activity. "A number of place cells generates electrical activity called a 'spiking pattern,'" Ji said. "When the rat is in a certain place, a group of neurons generates a specific pattern of spikes and when it moves to a different place, a different group of neurons generates another pattern of spikes. The patterns are very distinct. We can predict where the animal is by looking at its pattern of ...

Cocaine is one of the most widely-used illicit drugs i n the Western world and is highly addictive. A report last year by the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs found that almost one in 10 of all 16-to 59-year-olds have used cocaine in their lifetime. Cocaine use was implicated in, but not necessarily the cause of 234 deaths in Scotland, England and Wales in 2013. However, despite significant advances in our understanding of the biology of addiction -- including how the brains of people addicted to cocaine may differ in structure -- there is currently no medical treatment for cocaine addiction; most individuals are treated with talking or cognitive therapies. A team of researchers led by Dr Karen Ersche from the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge examined brain tissue in 44 people who were addicted to cocaine and 44 healthy control volunteers. In the cocaine group, they detected excessive amounts of iron in a region of the brain known as the globus pal...

"The effects of cognitive training in dementia patients have been studied actively during recent decades but the quality and reliability of the studies varies," says licensed neuropsychologist Eeva-Liisa Kallio. She reviewed 31 randomized controlled trials on cognitive training in dementia patients. Kallio's reserch paper "Cognitive Training Interventions for Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review" was published in  Journal of Alzheimer's Disease . Some of the studies in the review focused primarily on cognitive training and in others cognitive training was part of broader cognitive or multi-component intervention. "Many of the studies reported effects on cognitive functions immediately after the intervention but only few studies included follow-up of the patients or showed improvement in cognitive functions that were not directly linked to the skills trained in the intervention," Kallio says. In the studies, cognitiv...

"The health of your vascular system in midlife is really important to the health of your brain when you are older," said Rebecca F. Gottesman, M.D., Ph.D., lead researcher and associate professor of neurology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In an ongoing study that began in 1987 and enrolled 15,744 people in four U.S. communities, the risk of dementia increased as people got older. That was no surprise, but heart disease risks detected at the start of the study, when participants were between 45-64 years of age, also had a significant impact on later dementia, researchers noted. Dementia developed in 1,516 people during the study, and the researchers found that the risk of dementia later in life was: 41 percent higher in midlife smokers than in non-smokers or former smokers; 39 percent higher in people with high blood pressure (?140/90 mmHg) in middle age, and 31 percent higher in those with pre-hypertension (between 120/80 mmHg and 139...

The adenosine receptor belongs to the GPCR family (G Protein-Coupled Receptors), a large group of proteins located in cell membranes, which are key in the transmission of signals and communication between cells. GPCRs are therefore involved in the majority of important physiological processes, including the interpretation of sensory stimuli such as vision, smell, and taste, the regulation of the immune and inflammatory system, and behaviour modulation. "Cholesterol is an essential component of neuronal membranes, where GPCRs reside along with other proteins. Interestingly, the levels of cholesterol in the membrane are altered in diseases such as Alzheimer's, where GPCRs like the adenosine receptor play a key role," explains Jana Selent, head of the GPCR Drug Discovery research group at the GRIB, a joint programme between Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). "This study has shown that cholesterol can exert direct...

Abnormally high blood sugar levels, or hyperglycaemia, is well-known as a characteristic of diabetes and obesity, but its link to Alzheimer's disease is less familiar. Diabetes patients have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to healthy individuals. In Alzheimer's disease abnormal proteins aggregate to form plaques and tangles in the brain which progressively damage the brain and lead to severe cognitive decline. Scientists already knew that glucose and its break-down products can damage proteins in cells via a reaction called glycation but the specific molecular link between glucose and Alzheimer's was not understood. But now scientists from the University of Bath Departments of Biology and Biochemistry , Chemistry and Pharmacy and Pharmacology, working with colleagues at the Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases, King's College London, have unraveled that link. By studying brain samples from people with and without Alzheimer...

But all that could change, thanks to groundbreaking findings to be published in  Science  by a Technion-Israel Institute of Technology team led by Assistant Professor Meytal Landau of the Faculty of Biology. The researchers discovered, for the first time, unique amyloid fibrils through which the pathogenic and highly drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacterium attacks the human cells and immune system. The research could advance the discovery of antibiotics with a novel mechanism of action that will attack key bacterial toxins. The researchers discovered 'ammunition' that assists the infectious bacterium: a novel form of an amyloid fibril whose three-dimensional structure was determined at atomic resolution, revealing the first-of-its-kind structure of this toxic fibril. Amyloids, which are proteins notoriously known for their association with neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, form a network of protein fibrils -- somewhat similar t...

It has been shown that virtual reality game-based applications and especially virtual supermarkets can detect MCI. Past studies have utilized user performance in such applications along with data from standardized neuropsychological tests in order to detect MCI. The team that conducted this study was the first scientific team to achieve reliable MCI detection using a virtual reality game-based application on its own. In that previous study , administration of the virtual super market (VSM) exercise was conducted by an examiner. The present study eliminated the need for an examiner by calculating the average performance of older adults using a special version of the VSM application, the VSM Remote Assessment Routine (VSM-RAR), at home on their own, for a period of one month. It is the first instance where a self-administered virtual reality application was used to detect MCI with a high degree of reliability. The research team included scientists from the Aristotle University of The...

The study of the development of Alzheimer's disease on a molecular level presents unique challenges, as neurons behave differently in vivo vs. in vitro. Using mice as models presents useful insights, but mouse models never fully develop the disease, despite the fact that their brains and neurons share many similarities with those of humans. A new, humanized model A team of researchers has now transplanted human neurons into mouse brains which mimick some of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, including the presence of amyloid plaques. They found that, compared to mouse neurons, human neurons were much more sensitive to amyloid plaque pathology. This novel model allows for a better characterization of the disease processes that actually take place in the brain of human patients. Much of the work was performed in close cooperation with prof. Pierre Vanderhaeghen (ULB-WELBIO, VIB-KULeuven), whose lab previously pioneered the technology to differentiate human pluripote...

Mild cognitive impairment is a transitional state between normal age-related changes in cognition and dementia. Because many people with the condition display symptoms similar to those caused by Alzheimer's disease, some physicians prescribe donepezil, which is marketed under the brand name Aricept and is the most-prescribed medication for Alzheimer's. Donepezil was tested as a possible treatment for mild cognitive impairment in a large, federally funded study published in 2005, but it was not approved by the FDA. Still, doctors have often prescribed the drug "off-label" -- meaning that it is not approved for that specific disorder -- for their patients with mild cognitive impairment. From data collected during the 2005 trial, the researchers looked at the association between BChE-K and changes in cognitive function. Using two tests that measure cognitive impairment, the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Clinical Dementia Rating Sum of Boxes, they found ...