nerve cells

It can be an all too common scenario among certain stroke survivors.

They can’t see or recognize anything on one side of their body. This condition often occurs after a stroke on the right side of the brain and is typically treated with a combination of physical therapy and brain re-training or mental tasks using a pen and paper or computer.

(University of Rochester) The human brain is bombarded with a cacophony of information from the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin.

Now a team of scientists at the University of Rochester, Washington University in St. Louis, and Baylor College of Medicine has unraveled how the brain manages to process those complex, rapidly changing, and often conflicting sensory signals to make sense of our world.

(Ruhr-University Bochum) Prof. Dr. Motoharu Yoshida and colleagues from Boston University investigated how the rhythmic activity of nerve cells supports spatial navigation.

The research scientists showed that cells in the entorhinal cortex, which is important for spatial navigation, oscillate with individual frequencies.

These frequencies depend on the position of the cells within the entorhinal cortex. The researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience.

(NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke) By isolating cells from patients' spinal tissue within a few days after death, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed a new model of the paralyzing disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

They found that during the disease, cells called astrocytes become toxic to nerve cells - a result previously found in animal models but not in humans.

The new model could be used to investigate many more questions about ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

A man paralyzed for four years can now stand and move his legs thanks to an implanted electronic device that stimulates function -- and perhaps growth -- of nerve cells in the spine.

(Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions) Providing clues into why the severity of a common parasitic infection can vary greatly from person to person, a new Johns Hopkins study shows that each one of three strains of the cat-borne parasite Toxoplasma gondii sets off a unique reaction in the nerve cells it invades.

(University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine) For rodent pups, bonding with mom isn't hard-wired in the womb. It develops over the first few weeks of life, which is achieved by their maturing sense of smell, possibly allowing these mammals a survival advantage by learning to identify mother, siblings, and home.

Blending electrophysiological, biochemical and behavioral experiments, researchers demonstrated that neurons in the noses of mice mature after birth.

(University of California - Davis) The number of connections between nerve cells in the brain can be regulated by an immune system molecule, according to a new study from UC Davis.

(Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) The human brain consists of approximately one hundred billion nerve cells. Each of these cells needs to connect to specific other cells during the brain's development in order to form a fully functional organism.

Yet how does a nerve cell know where it should grow and which cells to contact? Scientists of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now shown that growing nerve cells realise when they've reached their target area in the fly brain thanks to the interaction of two genes.

(University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio) The finding that two molecules communicate to regulate electrical and chemical activity in nerve cells could be a passport to novel therapies for epilepsy and other diseases.