Neuroscience

If the idea of going to the gym makes you moan and groan, you’re not alone.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects an estimated 2.3 million people worldwide. Approximately 80% of people with MS have inflammation in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that helps control movement and balance, potentially leading to tremors, poor coordination, and trouble with motor control. These problems often persist and can worsen over time, as the cerebellum gradually loses healthy brain tissue.

Huntington’s disease has long defied attempts to rescue suffering neurons. A new study in Cell Reports shows that transplanting healthy human glial progenitor cells into the brains of adult animal models of the disease not only slowed motor and cognitive decline but also extended lifespan. These findings shift our understanding of Huntington’s pathology and open a potential path to cell-based therapies in adults already showing symptoms.

An ETH spin-off, Swiss Vascular, has developed anatomically exact silicone models of cerebral vessels. Through this development, researchers will not only reduce the amount of animal experimentation required but also improve the standard of medical training for complex medical procedures.

Removing information from memories may help people retain what they want to remember. Studies focus on how the brain removes information by subconsciously not paying attention to these details, but sometimes there is a need to consciously remove unneeded details from memories.

How the brain largely maintains its function when neurons are lost—this is what researchers at the University Medical Center Mainz, the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and Hebrew University (Jerusalem) have deciphered. They show that neuronal networks in the cerebral cortex reorganize within a short period of time, with other nerve cells taking over the tasks of the lost neurons.

New research from the University of Minnesota Medical School suggests that different genetic forms of autism may lead to similar patterns in brain activity and behavior. The findings were recently published in Nature Neuroscience.

For decades, scientists have used near-infrared light to study the brain in a noninvasive way. This optical technique, known as fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy), measures how light is absorbed by blood in the brain, to infer activity.

Two RIKEN researchers have used a scheme for simplifying data to mimic how the brain of a fruit fly reduces the complexity of information about smells it perceives. This could also help enhance our understanding of how the human brain processes sensory data.

A study led by the Sant Pau Research Institute (IR Sant Pau) has succeeded in describing, for the first time in detail, the structural evolution of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) regions across the clinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down syndrome. The results, published in the journal Brain, reveal that volume and cortical thickness loss in these regions can begin 13 to 15 years before the onset of symptoms, marking a significant advance in early diagnosis and the design of preventive clinical trials.