By combining a research technique that dates back 136 years with modern molecular genetics, a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist has been able to see how a mammal's brain shrewdly revisits and reuses the same molecular cues to control the complex design of its circuits.

Details of the observation in lab mice, published Dec. 24 in Nature, reveal that semaphorin, a protein found in the developing nervous system that guides filament-like processes, called axons, from nerve cells to their appropriate targets during embryonic life, apparently assumes an entirely different role later on, once axons reach their targets. In postnatal development and adulthood, semaphorins appear to be regulating the creation of synapses -- those connections that chemically link nerve cells.

LA JOLLA, CA-Like a spotlight that illuminates an otherwise dark scene, attention brings to mind specific details of our environment while shutting others out. A new study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies shows that the superior colliculus, a brain structure that primarily had been known for its role in the control of eye and head movements, is crucial for moving the mind's spotlight.

The title of the paper is "Distributed Fading Memory for Stimulus Properties in the Primary Visual Cortex" and it is the collaboration of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, Graz University of Technology in Austria. These teams were able to collect data using multielectrode recordings from the primary visual cortex of cats. Then using a 3 visual stimulus's (letters of the alphabet), they recorded brain activity of stimulus-related information in the spiking activity of large ensembles of around 100 neurons.

From the Salk Institute

LA JOLLA, CA-When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver-the body's metabolic clearinghouse-is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body's circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.

UC Irvine neuroscientists have discovered that individuals with a gene variant - which limits the availability of the protein, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) - perform more than 20 percent worse on driving tests than those people without the variant. About 30% of Americans will have the gene variant.

Scientists recently discovered that a cyanobacteria, collected off the coast of Papua New Guinea, produces a compound with a structure that has never before been seen in biomedicine.

Caltech scientists have isolated two groups of neurons in fruit fly brains that are capable of sensing and manipulating the fly's fat stores - making these flies a potential useful model for the study of obesity in humans.

The findings are published in the August 13 issue of the journal Neuron.

While sleep has long been thought to play a role in the establishment of long-term memories, recent work by MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory may have helped to solidify that understanding.

Researchers from the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center are using classic 'Where's Waldo?' puzzles to gain insight into how the brain searches for objects of interest.

Discovery demonstrates the feasibility of using iPS-derived motor neurons to model and treat diseases. Stem cells scientists at UCLA showed for the first time that human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be differentiated into electrically active motor neurons, a discovery that may aid in studying and treating neurological disorders.