Dopamine, a signaling molecule used throughout the brain, plays a major role in regulating our mood, as well as controlling movement. Many disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, depression, and schizophrenia, are linked to dopamine deficiencies. MIT neuroscientists have now devised a way to measure dopamine in the brain for more than a year, which they believe […]
Home » Brain Tumor »
Heart attack: Substitute muscle thanks to stem cells
Myocardial infarction — commonly known as a heart attack — is still one of the main causes of death. According to the Federal Statistical Office, more than 49,00 people died of its consequences. And yet the mortality after heart attack has greatly decreased over the past decades: As compared to the early 1990s, it has […]
Canine melanoma study identifies genetic basis of disease; potential drug targets: Discoveries among dogs could someday lead to improved genome-based cancer treatments for both dogs and humans
As a veterinarian, Dr. Carolyn Duregger is familiar with the telltale signs of canine melanoma. So when she gave her own dog, Parker, a routine oral examination, the 1-centimeter-diameter discolored lump in the pup’s upper right gums took her breath away. “It’s an aggressive cancer with poor prognosis that I’ve seen many times. My stomach […]
Novel role of protein in important pathways that lead to cancer malignancy
Japanese researchers have revealed for the first time that a specific protein plays a critical role in the development and metastasis of highly aggressive prostate and breast cancer cells. The study reports that large amounts of the fatty acid-binding protein 5 (FABP5), a kind of transport protein for fatty acids, promotes processes associated with cancer […]
Misfolded proteins serve as ‘inherited memory’ of toxic insults
Protein aggregates have a bad reputation in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, but in bacteria, inheritance of aggregates by daughter cells may help protect against the same toxic stresses that triggered them in parental cells, according to a new study publishing 28 August in the open access journal PLOS Biology, by Sander […]
Heart-brain connection could be predictive biomarker for epilepsy
Heartbeat irregularities connected to brain activity abnormalities may lead to the ability to predict eventual epileptic seizures in subjects who suffered physical or infectious brain insults, according to Penn State researchers who studied mouse models of cerebral malaria, which often causes epilepsy in those who survive. “We were developing, in a project led by Steven […]
Traumatic brain injury recovery via petri dish: Synchronized brain-like activity created, recorded and influenced by electrical stimulation
Researchers in the University of Georgia’s Regenerative Bioscience Center have succeeded in reproducing the effects of traumatic brain injury and stimulating recovery in neuron cells grown in a petri dish. This makes them the first known scientific team in the country to do so using stem cell-derived neurons. The procedure, detailed in a new paper […]
Brain cancer potentially resists immunotherapies by trapping T cells in bone marrow
Certain brain cancers are associated with low numbers of immune system T-cells circulating in the peripheral blood. Low T-cell numbers can be a side-effect of cancer treatment. But it now appears that there is more to the story of these missing T-cells. Researchers from multiple institutions, including Osaka University, have now revealed how brain cancers […]
Antidepressant restores youthful flexibility to aging inhibitory neurons in mice
A new study provides fresh evidence that the decline in the capacity of brain cells to change, called “plasticity,” rather than a decline in total cell number may underlie some of the sensory and cognitive declines associated with normal brain aging. Scientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and memory show that inhibitory interneurons in […]
Common skin cancer can signal increased risk of other cancers
People who develop abnormally frequent cases of a skin cancer known as basal cell carcinoma appear to be at significantly increased risk for the development of other cancers, including blood, breast, colon and prostate cancers, according to a preliminary study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The increased susceptibility is likely caused […]