What did scientists recently discover about neurons in the hippocampus?
Scientists at Duke University and the University of North Carolina have devised a chemical technique that promises to allow neuroscientists to discover the function of any population of neurons in an animal brain, and provide clues to treating and preventing brain disease. With the technique they describe in the journal Neuron online on July 15, scientists will be able to noninvasively activate entire populations of individual types of neurons within a brain structure. “We have discovered a method in which systemic administration of an otherwise inert chemical to a mutant mouse selectively activates a single group of neurons,” said James McNamara, M.D., chairman of the Duke Department of Neurobiology and co-senior author of the paper. “Elaborating on this method promises to let scientists engineer different kinds of mutant mice in which single groups of neurons will be activated by this chemical, so scientists can understand the behaviors mediated by each of these groups.” Right now, m
Scientists reveal how neuronal activity is timed in brain’s memory-making circuits May 29th, 2009 Theta oscillations are a type of prominent brain rhythm that orchestrates neuronal activity in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for the formation of new memories. For several decades these oscillations were believed to be “in sync” across the hippocampus, timing the firing of neurons like a sort of central pacemaker. A new study conducted by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) argues that this long-held assumption needs to be revised. In a paper published in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, the researchers showed that instead of being in sync, theta oscillations actually sweep along the length of the hippocampus as traveling waves. “It was assumed that activity in the hippocampus is synchronized throughout,” says Evgueniy Lubenov, a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Biological Circuit Design at Caltech. “But when we looked simultaneously at ma
Famous Names Get Single Neurons Fired Up U.S. News & World Report – Jul 27, 2009 An international team of researchers has found that single neurons in the brain’s hippocampus activate when people recognize a photo or name Sources: http://www.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/07/27/famous-names-get-single-neurons-fired-up.
