Category Health/Medical

By keeping the brain in sync, these long-hypothesized but never-found neurons help rodents to detect subtle sensations. By measuring the fast electrical spikes of individual neurons in the touch region of the brain, Brown University neuroscientists have discovered a new type of cell that keeps time so regularly that it may serve as the brain’s long-hypothesized clock or metronome.

This type of neuron spikes rhythmically, and in a synchronized manner, independent of external sensations, said Chris Moore, a professor of neuroscience at Brown and the associate director of the Carney Institute for Brain Science...

Advance, made possible by tiny photonic implants, could lead to new treatments for cancer, mental disorders. A new University at Buffalo-led study describes how researchers wirelessly controlled FGFR1 – a gene that plays a key role in how humans grow from embryos to adults – in lab-grown brain tissue.

The ability to manipulate the gene, the study’s authors say, could lead to new cancer treatments, and ways to prevent and treat mental disorders such as schizophrenia. The work – spearheaded by UB researchers Josep M. Jornet, Michal K. Stachowiak, Yongho Bae and Ewa K...

A team at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has identified a gene that could make immunotherapy treatments, specifically checkpoint inhibitors, work for a wider variety of cancer patients. The study, published today in Developmental Cell, found that when the DUX4 gene is expressed in cancer cells, it can prevent the cancer from being recognized and destroyed by the immune system.

The team, led by Drs...

Fundamental scientific discovery could lead to new ways to repair damaged hearts. University of Calgary researchers are the first to discover a previously unidentified cell population in the pericardial fluid found inside the sac around the heart. The discovery could lead to new treatments for patients with injured hearts. The study led by Drs. Paul Kubes, PhD, Justin Deniset, PhD and Paul Fedak, MD, PhD is published in the journal Immunity.

The Kubes lab, in collaboration with the Fedak lab, found that a specific cell, a Gata6+ pericardial cavity macrophage, helps heal an injured heart in mice. The cell was discovered in the pericardial fluid (sac around the heart) of a mouse with heart injury...