Researchers identify new strategy to protect offspring from prenatal stress
New research from the University of Iowa and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center demonstrates that offspring can be protected from the effects of prenatal stress by administering a neuroprotective compound during pregnancy.
Working in a mouse model, Rachel Schroeder, a student in the UI Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience, drew a connection between the work of her two mentors, Hanna Stevens, MD, PhD, UI associate professor of psychiatry and Ida P. Haller Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Andrew A. Pieper, MD, PhD, a former UI faculty member, now Morley-Mather Chair of Neuropsychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and Investigator and Director of the Neurotherapeutics Center at the Harrington Discovery Institute, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.
Credit: Christian Fleury (INRS)
An interdisciplinary team of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) used an innovative imaging technique for a better understanding of motor deficits in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). The researchers were able to follow the escape behaviour of normal and disease zebrafish models, in 3D. Their results have recently been published in
Optica, the flagship journal of the Optical Society (OSA).
Professor Jinyang Liang, expert in ultra-fast imaging and biophotonics, joined an effort with Professor Kessen Patten, specialist in genetics and neurodegenerative diseases. The two groups were able to track the position of zebrafish in real time and capture the 3D motion, using a special imaging technique called dispersion-eliminated coded-aperture light field, or DECALF.
Insomnia patients commonly underestimate their actual sleep behavior
People with sleep disorders commonly have a misperception about their actual sleep behavior. A research group led by Karin Trimmel and Stefan Seidel from MedUni Vienna s Department of Neurology (Outpatient Clinic for Sleep Disorders and Sleep-Related Disorders) analyzed polysomnography results to identify the types of sleep disorder that are associated with a discrepancy between self-reported and objective sleep parameters and whether there are any factors that influence this.
The main finding: irrespective of age, gender or screening setting, insomnia patients are most likely to underestimate how long they sleep. The study has been published in the highly regarded
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New research from the University of Iowa and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center demonstrates that offspring can be protected from the effects of prenatal stress by administering a neuroprotective compound during pregnancy.
Working in a mouse model, Rachel Schroeder, a student in the UI Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience, drew a connection between the work of her two mentors, Hanna Stevens, MD, PhD, UI associate professor of psychiatry and Ida P. Haller Chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Andrew A. Pieper, MD, PhD, a former UI faculty member, now Morley-Mather Chair of Neuropsychiatry at Case Western Reserve University and Investigator and Director of the Neurotherapeutics Center at the Harrington Discovery Institute, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.
Neural network models mimic the behavior of real dendrites
Neurons, the fundamental units of the brain, are complex computers by themselves. They receive input signals on a tree-like structure - the dendrite. This structure does more than simply collect the input signals: it integrates and compares them to find those special combinations that are important for the neurons role in the brain.
Moreover, the dendrites of neurons come in a variety of shapes and forms, indicating that distinct neurons may have separate roles in the brain.
A simple yet faithful model
In neuroscience, there has historically been a tradeoff between a model s faithfulness to the underlying biological neuron and its complexity. Neuroscientists have constructed detailed computational models of many different types of dendrites.