Drugs affect different people in different ways. Take cocaine for example. Not only does the drug have a stronger impact on the behavior of individuals with a particular genetic makeup, it also initiates more profound changes in their brains. Researchers at the University of Michigan are studying brain plasticity in cocaine-treated rats after a period of abstinence. They're studying how abstinence from the drug affects different...
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Sensory stimuli are all around us. Street traffic zooms by. A neighbor waves “hello.” A co-worker taps away at his keyboard. Each sight, sound, and motion ignite action within our brains. But even without all these stimuli, the brain is always active. Known as “spontaneous activity,” the activity happening inside the brain in the absence of direct stimuli follows a pattern of up and down states...
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Life's little pleasures often elude those suffering from depression, including rats, who show little interest in sugar water after experiencing stress. This behavior leads scientists to speculate that the illness might be characterized by a defect in the brain's neural reward circuit. Recent research focuses on a key element of this circuit – the nucleus accumbens (NAc), part of the brain region known as the ventral...
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Scientists hypothesize that seizures occur because brain cells fire in places they're not supposed to. Dentate granule cells (DGCs), a type of neuron born throughout adulthood, sometimes migrate into a different region of the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus. These abnormal newborn cells sprout axons called “mossy fibers” that form connections with neighboring DGCs in the inner molecular layer, causing synaptic changes that...
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If one area isn't working, another part can step in. Plasticity is one of the brain's most beautiful attributes. Recent research has documented the organ's ability to compensate in the face of damage, and now a new study identifies a key region for compensation when the damage occurs in the hippocampus. The region is the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). It's an integral part of the hippocampal-prefrontal-amygdala...
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Obstetricians and midwifes have long hailed the benefits of folic acid during pregnancy. Now new research offers evidence that choline is another important nutrient for the developing fetus. Found in foods like eggs and cauliflower, choline is known to aid healthy liver function. But in the past few years, studies have shown that the nutrient also plays a role in brain development. One recent study...
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Researchers at the Waisman Center (University of Wisconsin-Madison) just took a big step in their quest to develop regenerative medicines for treating Parkinson's, Alzheimer’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases. They used human embryonic stem cells to restore memory and learning in disabled mice. The study, published last month in Nature Biotechnology, "is the first to show that human stem cells can successfully implant themselves in the brain...
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MBF Bioscience received a prestigious Tibbetts Award during a ceremony at the White House on May 16. The Tibbetts Award recognizes MBF Bioscience for a number of accomplishments including: technological innovation, serving federal Research and Development needs, encouraging diverse participation, and increasing the practical commercial use of federal research. The Tibbetts Award is given to companies who participate in the Small Business Innovation Research program which is run by...
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The importance of studying the brain in three dimentions is something we understand at MBF Bioscience. Every day scientists around the world use our products to reconstruct neurons and analyze brain cells in 3D. That's why we're excited to hear about the new possibilities for whole brain analysis coming out of Dr. Karl Deisseroth's lab at Stanford University. A press release issued last week describes a...
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There's a lot to be said for being in the right place at the right time. For a neuron, emerging at a certain place within the brain destines it for a particular function. A new study posits that, for a group of cells in the hippocampus, it's not only where a neuron is born, but also when it is born, that defines the specific roles...
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