Brain lesions produced by major brain trauma or stroke can alter neuronal connections between the motor cortex, a critical brain area needed for coordinating voluntary movement, and the muscles.
Neuroscience
The report states that vascular dementia is the second most frequent subtype of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. Still, the two illnesses are different clinically.
Findings could inform artificial intelligence research by helping investigators determine how one could develop more distributed neural networks.
The researchers collected several thousand cells in each brain from a region of the brain that is affected by Alzheimer’s and ageing.
Mitochondria live in all our cells, but unlike other organelles, mitochondria sport their own DNA—a small, circular strand with about three dozen genes.
The researchers focused on mouse retinal ganglion cells in the study, which project from the retina to the superior colliculus a part of the brain where they synapse onto downstream target neurons.
Numerous treatments are being developed to target the genes causing the more than 100 epilepsies that have been linked to a single gene mutation.
Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and Parkinson’s disease are among the neurodegenerative diseases that are characterized by the buildup of abnormal proteins.
The researchers then demonstrated that specific neurons and synapses along this pathway are highly activated when mice expect and experience pain relief, even in the absence of medication.
