A new map of a brain circuit specific to chronic pain suggests a promising route to treatment for the roughly 60 million Americans living with persistent pain, according to a study published in Nature. The study showed that silencing the specific cells that drive this circuit eased chronic pain while preserving acute pain responses-in other words, the body’s … Read more
For decades, multiple sclerosis research has focused on myelin, the insulation around the brain’s wiring. Scientists paid less attention to another loss that was happening in parallel: neurons in the cortex, the seat of higher thinking and cognition, were quietly dying. A team led by UC San Francisco, University of Cambridge, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center … Read more
Neural organoids have been heralded as having huge potential for advancing our knowledge of the brain in several fields. These include exploring the responses of brain tissue to drugs, investigating the effect of specific genetic mutations on neural electrical activity and characterising how neural systems develop. In the past, viability of these systems has been limited by their scalability, reproducibility and longevity. New research from King’s College London has succeeded in scaling up the organoid approach; … Read more
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating neurological disorder caused by malfunctioning immune responses that target the brain and spinal cord of the central nervous system (CNS). What makes our body turn against itself? Failure of the immune system to distinguish ‘self’ from ‘non-self’ entities leads to excessive autoimmune responses against self-proteins like myelin, which forms … Read more
A common wild plant may hold hidden brain benefits. Dandelion leaf polyphenols survive digestion and continue targeting pathways associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Study: Characterisation of Dandelion Polyphenols and Their In Vitro Neuroprotective Effects During Simulated Digestion. Image credit: DUSAN ZIDAR/Shutterstock.com A recent study in Foods examined the enzyme-targeted neuroprotective potential of polyphenols from dandelion flowers, roots, … Read more
Huntington’s disease is a devastating brain disorder that slowly robs people of movement, memory and personality. It is caused by a toxic protein that builds in brain cells and ultimately kills them. For years, scientists have known that this harmful protein doesn’t stay put – it spreads from one brain cell to another. However, exactly … Read more
The first sign came when Deepanwita Dasgupta was 5 and started stumbling more while playing at her home in Bangalore in southern India. The girl was always up to something, so her parents figured extra bumps and bruises were just symptoms of an active childhood. Maybe, they thought, it was ill-fitting shoes. Relatives described the … Read more
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) belong to a spectrum of neurodegenerative diseases with overlapping symptoms, characterized by muscle wasting, paralysis, dementia, and other serious impairments. There are currently no effective treatments. Many patients have a common hallmark: A protein called TDP-43 clumps together in the neurons of the brain to form tiny … Read more
Published in The Lancet Neurology, a new review from the University of Colorado Anschutz in collaboration with UT Southwestern Medical Center, offers the latest scientific explanations for why ketogenic diets reduce seizures in people with epilepsy. The paper brings together insights from both laboratory discoveries and real‑world patient outcomes, showing that ketogenic diets do far more … Read more
Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found. The study, published in Brain Research, took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made … Read more