Earlier this summer, a team of researchers led by Dennis J. Selkoe of Harvard Medical School published a potentially significant finding in Nature suggesting that alpha-synuclein, the protein that aggregates into insoluble fibrils within Lewy bodies in patients with Parkinson’s disease, has been mischaracterized. In contrast previous understanding of alpha-synuclein as a natively unstructured protein, Selkoe and his lab proposed that alpha-synuclein naturally exists as a stable tetramer before destabilization and pathological aggregation. In a push forward in Parkinson’s disease research, a recent independent study by the Petsko-Ringe and Pochapsky laboratories at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, confirmed the hypothesis by Selkoe and colleagues. The finding is supported by analytical techniques--namely NMR and circular dichroism spectroscopy--different from the Selkoe lab and is published in the October 25 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at RIKEN, Japan's flagship research organization, have developed a ground-breaking new aqueous reagent which literally turns biological tissue transparent. Experiments using fluorescence microscopy on samples treated with the reagent, published this week in Nature Neuroscience, have produced vivid 3D images of neurons and blood vessels deep inside the mouse brain. Highly effective and cheap to produce, the reagent offers an ideal means for analyzing the complex organs and networks that sustain living systems.

UPDATE: A recent independent study by the Petsko-Ringe and Pochapsky laboratories at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA, has confirmed the native tetrameric structure of alpha-synuclein proposed by Selkoe and colleagues.

In a recent study that could radically change our understanding of the pathophysiology of Parkinson’s disease, principal investigator Dennis J. Selkoe at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School discovered that the overall three-dimensional structure of alpha-synuclein, a protein that abnormally aggregates as Lewy bodies in the brains of Parkinson’s patients, has likely been mischaracterized. Prior to this study, scientists had thought that alpha-synuclein in healthy cells is arranged as a randomly coiled chain with no apparent orderly structure. Selkoe’s lab, however, has shown otherwise in their study published online August 14 in Nature.

Researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences have concluded a study which demonstrates that regular exercise modifies the brain environment, and could help prevent damage associated with diseases such as Alzheimer's.

A picture of "calm", Buddhist monks - who've spent tens of thousands of hours of their lives meditating - have been shown to have different patterns of brain activity from non-meditators, and subsequent research has proven these types of brain activity patterns are associated with more positive moods.

Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute had some unexpected findings when searching for genes that influence the amount of amyloid that deposits as brain plaques in Alzheimer's disease. Through an extensive gene hunt, the team identified three candidate genes that seemed to offer protection in mice from brain amyloid accumulation and deposition.

Some disorders of the brain are obvious — the massive death of brain cells after a stroke, the explosion in the growth of cells that marks a tumor. Other disorders, such as autism, schizophrenia and mental retardation show no physical signs of damage and are believed to be caused by problems in how brain cells communicate with one another.

Researchers have produced a lasting anti-cocaine immunity in mice by giving them a safe vaccine that combines bits of the common cold virus with a particle that mimics cocaine.

In their study, published Jan. 4 in the online edition of Molecular Therapy and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the researchers say this novel strategy might be the first to offer cocaine addicts a fairly simple way to break and reverse their habit, and it might also be useful in treating other addictions, such as to nicotine, heroin and other opiates.

Researchers from California Institute of Technology have recently described how two different neural subtypes act as a gate that controls the outflow of "fear" from the amygdala region of our brains.

In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.

“We have been able to decode spoken words using only signals from the brain with a device that has promise for long-term use in paralyzed patients who cannot now speak,” says Bradley Greger, an assistant professor of bioengineering.

Because the method needs much more improvement and involves placing electrodes on the brain, he expects it will be a few years before clinical trials on paralyzed people who cannot speak due to so-called “locked-in syndrome.” The Journal of Neural Engineering’s September issue is publishing Greger’s study showing the feasibility of translating brain signals into computer-spoken words.