Category Biology/Biotechnology

What role do the stages of sleep play in forming memories? “We’ve known for a long time that useful learning happens during sleep,” says University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Anna Schapiro. “You encode new experiences while you’re awake, you go to sleep, and when you wake up your memory has somehow been transformed.”

Yet precisely how new experiences get processed during sleep has remained mostly a mystery. Using a neural network computational model they built, Schapiro, Penn Ph.D. student Dhairyya Singh, and Princeton University’s Kenneth Norman now have new insight into the process.

In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they show that as the brain cycles through slow-wave and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, which happens about five t...

Health benefits come from eating during the daytime, demonstrating a potential link to energy release. Northwestern Medicine scientists have uncovered the mechanism behind why eating late at night is linked to weight gain and diabetes.

The connection between eating time, sleep and obesity is well-known but poorly understood, with research showing that over-nutrition can disrupt circadian rhythms and change fat tissue.

New Northwestern research has shown for the first time that energy release may be the molecular mechanism through which our internal clocks control energ...

Neurochemical changes in the brain differ among patients with social anxiety treated using both SSRIs and CBT, compared to those treated using only CBT. While the combined treatment involving the medicine blocked the serotonin transporters, availability of such transporters increased in patients who only received CBT.

Treatment using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, is effective for depression and anxiety and can be even more effective when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. However, it has not been established which mechanisms in the brain clarify the clinical improvement.

In a double-blind positron emission tomography (PET) study, researchers at Uppsala University investigated people with social anxiety and looked at how serotonin and dopamin...

Targeting a specific enzyme in the muscle could help cancer patients preserve muscle mass and potentially prolong their survival, according to research from UTHealth Houston.

A study led by Yi-Ping Li, PhD, professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, found that an enzyme known as UBR2 plays a critical role in cancer-induced muscle wasting, also called cancer cachexia.

The results were published today in the scientific journal PNAS.

“The findings will fill a key gap in understanding how cancer causes muscle mass and function loss,” said Li, senior author of the study and a faculty member with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate Scho...