A new study carried out by SISSA - Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi
Avanzati in collaboration with other institutions including Genos Glycoscience.
Research Laboratory from Zagreb, Croatia and Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste,
provides important information on the differences in structures of the prions, proteins responsible for diseases that at the state of the art are incurable.
Making sense of the mass data generated from firing neurons Dr Miguel Aguilera
Scientists have achieved a breakthrough in predicting the behaviour of neurons in large networks operating at the mysterious edge of chaos.
New research from the University of Sussex and Kyoto University outlines a new method capable of analysing the masses of data generated by thousands of individual neurons.
The new framework outperforms previous models in predicting and assessing network properties by more accurately estimating a system’s fluctuations with greater sensitivity to parameter changes.
As new technologies allow recording of thousands of neurons from living animals, there is a pressing demand for mathematical tools to study the non-equilibrium, complex dynamics of the high-dimensional data sets they generate. In this endeavour, the researchers hope to help answer key questions about how animals process information and adapt to environmental changes.
Credit: HBP
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting over 50 Million people worldwide. Patients suffer from seizures caused by sudden neuronal activity engaging at times large networks of the brain. In a third of all cases the disease is resistant to drugs. The most common treatment option for these patients is surgical removal of the epileptogenic zone , the areas of the brain, where the seizures emerge. Surgery success depends on locating these areas as precisely as possible. But in clinical practice this often proves very difficult, and the average surgery success rate remains at only around 60% , says Viktor Jirsa. Any improvement would have major impact for many patients .
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The ability to speak is one of the essential characteristics that distinguishes humans from other animals. Many people would probably intuitively equate speech and language. However, cognitive science research on sign languages since the 1960s paints a different picture: Today it is clear, sign languages are fully autonomous languages and have a complex organization on several linguistic levels such as grammar and meaning. Previous studies on the processing of sign language in the human brain had already found some similarities and also differences between sign languages and spoken languages. Until now, however, it has been difficult to derive a consistent picture of how both forms of language are processed in the brain.
Mouse brain showing genetically modified cells stuck in the neural precursor stage (red, yellow) and unable to progress to become neurons. Image credit:.