GABA tagged posts

One of the largest threats to human health is obesity, but now researchers from the University of Aberdeen Rowett Institute have made an important discovery in how the brain controls food intake.

Obesity and being overweight have become the “new normal” in modern times and can lead to a multitude of health problems. We know that excess weight is primarily caused by eating more calories than the body needs; however, new research published in Current Biology has found a specific cluster of cells in the brain that control body weight.

How the brain controls hunger has not been fully defined. The researchers discovered a cluster of brain cells that can be harnessed to reduce food intake and body weight...

A research group at Nagoya University in Japan has reported that a group of neurons, called EP3 neurons, in the preoptic area of the brain play a key role in regulating body temperature in mammals. The finding could pave the way for the development of a technology that artificially adjusts body temperature to help treat heatstroke, hypothermia, and even obesity. The new study was published in the journal Science Advances.

Body temperature in humans and many other mammals is regulated at around 37°C (98.6°F), which optimizes all regulatory functions. When their body temperature noticeably deviates from the normal range, the functions are impaired, which could lead to heat stroke, hypothermia, and, in the worst case, death...

The neurotransmitters GABA and glutamate have complementary roles—GABA inhibits neurons, while glutamate makes them more active. Published 22nd July in PLOS Biology, researchers led by Roi Cohen Kadosh and George Zacharopoulos from the University of Oxford show that levels of these two neurotransmitters in the intraparietal sulcus of the brain can predict mathematics ability. The study also found that the relationships between the two neurotransmitters and arithmetic fluency switched as children developed into adults.

Levels of brain excitement...

New therapeutic molecules developed at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) show promise in reversing the memory loss linked to depression and aging.
These molecules not only rapidly improve symptoms, but remarkably, also appear to renew the underlying brain impairments causing memory loss in preclinical models.

“Currently there are no medications to treat cognitive symptoms such as memory loss that occur in depression, other mental illnesses and aging,” says Dr. Etienne Sibille, Deputy Director of the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH and lead scientist on the study.

What’s unique and p...