A willowy pair of pyramidal cells engage in an intricate dance with a dense mass of basket cells on the cover of the September 14, 2011 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. This exquisite image illustrates recent work by Columbia University researchers Dr. Adam M. Packer and Dr. Rafael Yuste, who used Neurolucida to study circuit connectivity in the mammalian neocortex. According to the paper "Successfully filled...
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No two trees are exactly alike, in the forest or in the brain. Though despite the diversity of dendritic arborizations, when it comes to branching out different types of neurons do have a couple things in common, say researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Okazaki, Japan. Led by longtime MBF Bioscience customer Dr. Yoshiyuki Kubota, the research team identified two organizational principles common...
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Journeying along axons, microscopic powerhouses known as mitochondria provide cells with the energy they need to function. When something goes wrong with the axonal transport and mitochondria isn't delivered, the system fails, and the cell body dies. Scientists in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis study the cellular bases of neurological disorders. Their recent research focuses...
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Patients suffering from Parkinson's disease may have a new way to manage their illness: gene therapy. Scientists at seven leading gene therapy centers across the US saw improvements in patients when a gene that helps produce the inhibitory transmitter GABA was introduced to quiet the subthalamic nucleus, an overactive region of the brain in Parkinson's patients. Twenty-two subjects from a group of 45 patients aged 30-75...
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To a child with autism the world is an intense place. Strangers unnerve. Surprises unsettle. To cope, the autistic child creates his own internal world. It's placid, secure, and void of extremes. Though autism is one of the most common childhood developmental disorders in existence, affecting an estimated one in 110 children, we know little about how it works. Most theories suggest a deficiency in the...
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A stroke can leave its victim mentally and physically devastated. Recovery is demanding, and takes drive and determination. If the patient doesn't receive medical attention within the small, critical window of time after the stroke occurs, chances of a quick recovery are slim. Developments in stem cell research find doctors optimistic about new possibilities for stroke rehabilitation. Scientists at the Stanford Stroke Center, one of the...
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When Pavlov's dogs started salivating in response to a ringing bell, something happened in their brains—a memory was encoded. Over a century later scientists are still figuring out how memories are physically represented in the brain. One lingering question has been whether or not the same set of neurons is activated when a particular memory is formed. Researchers at the Johnson Lab at the Uniformed...
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What would you do with a neuron if you could activate its synapses in any combination you wanted? Tiago Branco, Beverley A. Clark and Michael Hauser created a chance to do just that (Branco, 2010). The authors, using in-vitro brain slices containing layer II/III pyramidal cells in visual or somatosensory cortex of rats, were able to excite identified spines in any order and with whatever...
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You could have the best hearing aids on the market, but if there is damage to the central auditory system, you're still not going to hear. Comprised of a sophisticated network that includes the auditory cortex and the inferior colliculi, the central auditory system is the part of the brain responsible for processing sound. Scientists at the Instituto de Neurociencias de Castilla y León and...
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The microscopic world just got a whole lot clearer for scientists around the world who use MBF Bioscience software. When images are magnified as intensely as they are in today's world of highly advanced scientific research, they don't always appear crystal clear. But by incorporating the clarifying process of deconvolution to microscopic images, previously hidden details emerge, allowing scientists to work with greater facility. Deconvolution is...
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