Category Biology/Biotechnology

Richard Maddock and his team conducted MRI exams of people before and after vigorous exercise to determine the effect of exercise on neurotransmitters. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California – Davis Health System

Intense exercise increases levels of 2 common neurotransmitters – glutamate and GABA The finding offers new insights into brain metabolism and why exercise could become an important part of treating depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders linked with deficiencies in neurotransmitters, which drive communications between the brain cells that regulate physical and emotional health.

“Major depressive disorder is often characterized by depleted glutamate and GABA, which return to normal when mental health is restored,” said Prof. Richard Maddock...

MRI image of brain (stock image). Postdoctoral researcher Patrick Watson studied the relationship between individual brain differences and cognitive abilities. Credit: © highwaystarz / Fotolia

Everyone has a different mixture of personality traits: some are outgoing, some are tough and some are anxious. A new study suggests brains also have different traits that affect both anatomical and cognitive factors, such as intelligence and memory. “A major focus of research in cognitive neuroscience is understanding how intelligence is shaped by individual differences in brain structure and function,” said Prof. Aron K. Barbey.

Barbey and his team measured the size and shape of features all over the brain...

Trehalose

Trehalose prevents fructose – thought to be a major contributor to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease – from entering the liver and triggers a cellular housekeeping process that cleans up excess fat buildup inside liver cells. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition closely linked to obesity, affects ~25% of people in the U.S. There is no drug treatment for the disease, although weight loss can reduce the buildup of fat in the liver.

“In general, if you feed a mouse a high-sugar diet, it gets a fatty liver,” said Brian J. DeBosch, MD, PhD, a pediatric gastroenterologist. “We found that if you feed a mouse a diet high in fructose plus provide drinking water that contains 3% trehalose, you completely block the development of a fatty liver...

Associate Professor Peter Barlis examines a 3-D printed heart artery. The ability to 3-D model the intricacies of the human heart are giving cardiologists incredible new insight into heart disease. Credit: The University of Melbourne

The images, gathered during a routine angiogram, are fed into a supercomputer. Within 24 hours, a model of a person’s artery is 3D printed. This gives cardiologists crucial information about the behaviour of blood flow and the precise structure of the artery from the inside. It also helps them make decisions about the best stent to use. The technique can also detect ‘hot spots’ for plaque which have been difficult to find using traditional techniques.

Heart disease remains the number one killer in Australia, affecting 1 in 6 adults...