Optogenetics News and Research

RSS

Oxytocin study may help treat a variety of psychiatric conditions

During the pandemic lockdown, as couples have been forced to spend days and weeks in one another's company, some have found their love renewed while others are on their way to divorce court.

16 Jun 2020

Study shows how a nervous system coordinates distinct behavioral outputs

For a nematode worm, a big lawn of the bacteria that it eats is a great place for it to disperse its eggs so that each hatchling can emerge into a nutritive environment.

11 Jun 2020

Biophysicists reveal molecular mechanism behind light-driven sodium pumping

An international research team has for the first time obtained the structure of the light-sensitive sodium-pumping KR2 protein in its active state.

28 May 2020

Studies advance the understanding of sensory disconnection during sleep and anesthesia

During sleep and under anesthesia, we rarely respond to such external stimuli as sounds even though our brains remain highly active.

28 May 2020

Study: Unique glucose-sensing neurons in the brain prevent severe hypoglycemia

Low blood sugar levels, known as hypoglycemia, can be a life-threatening situation, especially for people with type 1 diabetes who rely on intensive insulin therapy to prevent blood sugar from going too high.

4 May 2020

Studies show how sex-determining genes affect courtship and aggression behaviors

Fruit flies, like many animals, engage in a variety of courtship and fighting behaviors. Now, Salk scientists have uncovered the molecular mechanisms by which two sex-determining genes affect fruit fly behavior.

28 Apr 2020

Light-based deep brain stimulation used to treat motor dysfunction in Parkinson's disease models

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have used deep brain stimulation based on light to treat motor dysfunction in an animal model of Parkinson's disease.

27 Apr 2020

Scents regulate lipid metabolism without changing eating habits

Dr. Ayse Sena Mutlu, a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor's Huffington Center On Aging, had an intriguing question. Is it possible to change the body's fat storage without changing eating habits?

16 Apr 2020

Understanding early visual processing steps could have implications for schizophrenia, ADHD

Researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI) have defined a crucial window of time that mice need to key in on visual events.

8 Apr 2020

MIT neuroscientists identify memory cells that help us interpret novel situations

Imagine you are meeting a friend for dinner at a new restaurant. You may try dishes you haven't had before, and your surroundings will be completely new to you.

6 Apr 2020

Memory cells that help to interpret new situations discovered

Neurons that store abstract representations of past experiences are activated when a new, similar event takes place

6 Apr 2020

Amyloid plaque formation causes brain tissue loss in animals

Amyloid plaque formation directly causes brain tissue loss in animals, but a drug called lithium reduces the life-shortening effects of this loss, shows a study published today in eLife.

31 Mar 2020

Research provides better understanding of how tremor happens

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital have improved our understanding of how tremor -- the most common movement disorder -- happens, opening the possibility of novel therapies for this condition.

19 Mar 2020

Psychosis may be caused by problems with specialized nerve cells

A new Japanese study in mice published in the journal Nature indicates that the cause of the profound mental disturbance termed psychosis could be due to defects in the functioning of specialized nerve cells deep inside the brain, and due to some types of learning behavior. This could help understand how delusions arise in psychosis or schizophrenia, and eventually to develop therapies for these conditions.

18 Mar 2020

Study provides new insight on neural basis of tremors

New insight on what happens in brain cells to cause tremors in mice has been published today in the open-access journal eLife.

17 Mar 2020

New findings could shed light on pathologies in brain signaling

Our day-to-day lives can be seen as a series of complex motor sequences: morning routines, work or school tasks, actions we take around mealtimes, the rituals and habits woven through our evenings and weekends.

6 Mar 2020

Study shows how habits can be controlled based on the activity of the brain region

Each day, humans and animals rely on habits to complete routine tasks such as eating and sleeping. As new habits are formed, this enables us to do things automatically without thinking.

28 Feb 2020

New insights may guide design of light-sensitive proteins with desired properties

A team of scientists from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University has gained insight into how electric fields affect the way energy from light drives molecular motion and transformation in a protein commonly used in biological imaging.

13 Feb 2020

Findings shed new light on how striatum processes information to plan, execute movements

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have mapped how different nerve cells in the brain area striatum process information to plan and execute our movements at just the right time and with the right vigour. The results, presented in the journal Cell Reports, show that different cell types in the striatum receive signals from completely different parts of the cerebral cortex and thus respond to different types of information.

28 Jan 2020

Study sheds light on how norepinephrine release influences the fear-memory formation

Researchers at RIKEN Center for Brain Science have visualized the dynamic processes involving norepinephrine that influence different types of fear-memory formation in a living mouse model.

24 Jan 2020