Neuroscience

Every day, our brain takes countless fleeting experiences—from walks on the beach to presentations at work—and transforms them into long-term memories. How exactly this works remains a mystery, but neuroscientists believe that it involves a phenomenon called neural replay, in which neurons rapidly recreate the same activation sequences that occurred during the original experience. Surprisingly, neural replays can happen both before and after an experience, suggesting they help in both memory storage and also future planning.

Researchers from DZNE, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), and Technical University of Munich (TUM) have found that the enzyme “gamma-secretase”—implicated in Alzheimer’s disease and cancer—selects its reaction partners according to a complex scheme of molecular features.

A study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai shows that exposure to lead during pregnancy and early childhood may accelerate the rate at which children forget information—a critical marker of memory impairment that may have implications for learning and development.

Infections in the brain can have serious consequences and are often fatal. The immune defense system works differently here than in the rest of the body. A team of researchers at TWINCORE—Center for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research in Hanover—has now discovered, in collaboration with partners, which signaling pathways play a central role in communication between immune cells in the brain in their defense against viruses. The results have now been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation.

Researchers at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, are developing a panel of biomarkers for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and for distinguishing it from other types of dementia using blood tests. The research project is based on the genotype analysis of 500 volunteers with and without the disease.

Concussion in sport continues to make headlines, whether it be class actions, young men flocking to the highly violent “RunIt” activity or debate about whether Australian rules football should remove the “bump” once and for all.

Researchers at Leipzig University’s Carl Ludwig Institute have discovered that in the cerebral cortex, synaptic signal transmission between brain cells functions very reliably even at low concentrations of calcium ions—unlike in the rear region of the brain.

Cellular communication between neurons within our brain is complex and busy, much like a USPS mailroom.

Predicting how molecular changes affect the brain’s overall activity is a major challenge in neuroscience. Many deep questions about the brain can only be understood by looking at several layers of brain activity at the same time—with a so-called “multi-scale” approach. For a long time, this had been considered out of reach.

Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience have discovered how loss of a gene strongly associated with autism and macrocephaly (large head size) rewires circuits and alters behavior.