RIKEN

Neuroscience

Amplifying communication between neurons

Neurons send signals to each other across small junctions called synapses. Some of these signals involve the flow of potassium, calcium and sodium ions through channel proteins that are embedded within the membranes of neurons. ...

Ophthalmology

Improved retinal transplant technique ready for clinical trials

Researchers led by Michiko Mandai at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan have used a genetic modification to improve human-derived retina transplants grown in the lab. After transplant into damaged ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Schizophrenia related to abnormal fatty metabolism in the brain

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Brian Science (CBS) in Japan have discovered a deficiency in the brains of people with schizophrenia that could lead to the development of new drug therapies. A postmortem comparison published ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Deepening our understanding of selfish behavior

Is a selfish person just processing the decisions that result in rewards to others differently? Perhaps, suggests a recent RIKEN study. A RIKEN team, led by Hiroyuki Nakahara of the Laboratory for Integrated Theoretical Neuroscience ...

Genetics

Pinpointing a tell-tale mark of liver cancer

Persistent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection can lead to chronic hepatitis C and then progress to fatal liver diseases including liver cirrhosis and liver cancer, the third most common cause of cancer-related deaths. Worldwide, ...

Neuroscience

Learning and unlearning to fear: The two faces of noradrenaline

Emotional learning can create strong memories and powerful emotional responses, but flexible behavior demands that these responses be inhibited when they are no longer appropriate. Scientists at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute ...

Immunology

Could cytotoxic T-cells be a key to longevity?

Scientists from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Science (IMS) and Keio University School of Medicine in Japan have used single-cell RNA analysis to find that supercentenarians—meaning people over the age of 110—have ...

Biomedical technology

The free-energy principle explains the brain

The RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Japan, along with colleagues, has shown that the free-energy principle can explain how neural networks are optimized for efficiency. Published in the scientific journal Communications ...

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