dendritic spines tagged posts

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition in which affected individuals experience difficulties in social communication and exhibit restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior or interests.

A growing body of research suggests that neurobiological changes, particularly abnormalities in dendritic spines, tiny protrusions on nerve cells where synapses form, may be a hallmark of ASD...

Researchers have found that some people with schizophrenia have autoantibodies — which are made by the immune system and recognize the body’s own proteins, rather than outside threats such as viruses or bacteria — against NCAM1, a protein that’s importa.nt for communication between brain cells. The patients’ autoantibodies also caused schizophrenia-related behaviors in mice. These findings may improve the diagnosis and treatment of a subset of patients with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a disorder that affects how people act, think, and perceive reality...

Engram cell in AD mouse — This image depicts a single memory engram cell (green) in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) region of a mouse model of early Alzheimer’s disease. To optically manipulate specific connections to these engram cells, a blue light-sensitive protein oChIEF was expressed in an upstream brain region, i.e., medial entorhinal cortical inputs (red) to the DG. The majority of DG granule cells were not active during engram labeling (blue, non-engram cells). Credit: Image courtesy of RIKEN

The rescue of memories, which changed both the structure of neurons as well as the behavior of mice, was achieved using optogenetics, a method for manipulating genetically tagged cells with precise bursts of light...