Battle against fatal neurodegenerative disease advances on two fronts
European researchers are pioneering a vaccine and treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
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European researchers are pioneering a vaccine and treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
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Esther JeanBart leaned over her son's wheelchair, caressing his face and trying to make him giggle. Gianni JeanBart was under the weather, but still his eyes rolled toward her and his mouth widened, cracking a smile.
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In an ischemic stroke, an artery in the brain is blocked by blood clots and the brain cells can no longer be supplied with blood as a result. Doctors must therefore act quickly and unblock the artery with the help of catheters. ...
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Epilepsy, where patients suffer from unexpected seizures, affects roughly 1% of the population. These seizures often involve repetitive and excessive neuronal firing, and the trigger behind this still poorly understood.
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For the roughly 1.5 million Americans per year who survive a traumatic brain injury, health outcomes vary widely. Not only can these injuries lead to a loss of coordination, depression, impulsivity, and difficulty concentrating, ...
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Obesity has become a pressing worldwide health issue, with rates steadily rising over recent decades. Beyond its well-documented associations with physical health issues, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, obesity ...
Apr 18, 2024
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Contrary to previous assumptions, nerve cells in the human neocortex are wired differently than in mice. Those are the findings of a new study conducted by Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin and published in the journal ...
Apr 18, 2024
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To pass or not to pass, that is the question faced by soccer players the world over in every match. It might be unsurprising that higher skilled players exhibit better execution of actions than lower skilled ones, but now ...
Apr 18, 2024
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A sensitive perception of the environment is crucial for guiding our behavior. However, an overly sensitive response of the brain's neural circuits to stimuli can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders such as epilepsy. University ...
Apr 18, 2024
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New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London has found that the effectiveness of ADHD medication may be associated with an individual's neuroanatomy.
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The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all. In vertebrates, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary sensory apparatus of vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell.
Brains can be extremely complex. The cerebral cortex of the human brain contains roughly 15-33 billion neurons depending on gender and age, linked with up to 10,000 synaptic connections each. Each cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly one billion synapses. These neurons communicate with one another by means of long protoplasmic fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body and target them to specific recipient cells.
The most important biological function of the brain is to generate behaviors that promote the welfare of an animal. Brains control behavior either by activating muscles, or by causing secretion of chemicals such as hormones. Even single-celled organisms may be capable of extracting information from the environment and acting in response to it. Sponges, which lack a central nervous system, are capable of coordinated body contractions and even locomotion. In vertebrates, the spinal cord by itself contains neural circuitry capable of generating reflex responses as well as simple motor patterns such as swimming or walking. However, sophisticated control of behavior on the basis of complex sensory input requires the information-integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.
Despite rapid scientific progress, much about how brains work remains a mystery. The operations of individual neurons and synapses are now understood in considerable detail, but the way they cooperate in ensembles of thousands or millions has been very difficult to decipher. Methods of observation such as EEG recording and functional brain imaging tell us that brain operations are highly organized, but these methods do not have the resolution to reveal the activity of individual neurons.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA