News

Researchers: Early alcohol exposure does not change connection between brain’s immune system and neurons that send information related to functions like balance and memory (UPDATE)

Monday, May 8, 2023

Research out of the Majewska Lab at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester continues to show the brain’s immune system does not play a significant role in the neurological damage that occurs in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).

A new study out in Frontiers in Neuroscience investigated the interaction between microglia and Purkinje neurons—the neurons responsible for sending information from the cerebellum. Researchers found mice exposed to ethanol during development had no differences in microglia movement or structure and only subtle changes in the interaction between microglia and Purkinje neurons. “It appears that developmental ethanol exposure has little effect on microglia later in life,” said MaKenna Cealie, a Neuroscience graduate student in the lab and first author of the paper. “We believe examining other cell types and their interactions may be an important direction for future FASD studies to take.”

Other authors include the senior author Ania Majewska, PhD, Linh Le, Erik Vonkaenel, and Matthew McCall, PhD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, and James Douglas and Paul Drew, PhD, of the University of Arkansas Medical Center.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and the University of Rochester Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (UR-IDDRC).

Halting the Rise of Parkinson’s

Monday, April 24, 2023

Quality of life, health, and longevity are being increasingly tied to someone’s zip code rather than their genetic code. Cancer, heart disease, neurodegenerative disorders, and even our ability to fight infection are linked to the myriad of chemicals we are exposed to, often unwittingly, over the course of our lives. The University of Rochester’s leadership in the field of environmental medicine stretches back to toxicology research programs developed at the University under the Manhattan Project. These programs also served as the basis for the formation of a NIEHS Center of Excellence in environmental toxicology and health that is one of the oldest in the country celebrating 50 years of sustained funding. This foundation and the decades of work that followed—coupled with the recognition that the public health threat requires a collaborative commitment to research, education, and community engagement—led to the creation of the new Institute for Human Health and the Environment.

Paige Lawrence, PhD, the Wright Family Research Professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Medicine, is the founding director of the new Institute. “Genetics only explaining 10 to 15 percent of human health, which leaves the rest to the environment,” said Lawrence. “If we really want to have an impact on health, environmental influences need to be front and center.”

The new Institute will help power a team of neurologists, neuroscientists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, and researchers at the University of Rochester who are examining the impact of environmental chemical exposure on the brain. One disease in particular stands out. Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurodegenerative disease in the world, outpacing even Alzheimer’s, and a growing number of scientists are linking the disease’s rise to air pollution, pesticides, and a ubiquitous chemical pollutant.

Up the nose it goes

Air pollution is associated with many health problems, including asthma, heart disease, stroke, low birth weight, and inflammation. While epidemiological studies have hinted at the link between air pollution and neurological disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, the route these chemicals use to make their way into the brain, and the damage caused once there, was until recently poorly understood.

“We’ve known that air pollution has effects on the heart and the lung for a very long time, but it's really only been in about the past ten years that attention has been directed to its effects on the brain,” said Debbie Cory-Slechta, PhD, a professor of Environmental Medicine, Neuroscience, and Public Health Sciences. Cory-Slechta’s colleagues at the University of Rochester, Guenter Oberdoerster, PhD, and Alison Elder, PhD, were among the first to show that ultra-fine air pollution particles, called PM0.1, are able to hitch a ride directly into the brain via the nasal passage and olfactory nerves, bypassing the brain’s normal defenses.

Ian Fiebelkorn finds rhythmic brain activity helps to maintain temporary memories

Monday, April 24, 2023

New research shows that rhythmic brain activity is key to temporarily maintaining important information in memory. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester published these findings today in Current Biology that found brain rhythms—or patterns of neuronal activity—organize the bursts of activity in the brain that maintain short-term connections.

“The thought has been that the temporary storage of important information is linked to neurons in the brain that just fire away, retaining that information until it is no longer needed. Recent research has shown that it might not be such persistent brain activity that matters most for the temporary storage of information, but rather a short-term strengthening of the connections between neurons that are representing the information. Our research shows that brain rhythms are organizing these transient bursts over time,” said Ian Fiebelkorn, PhD, assistant professor of Neuroscience and senior author of the study. “The rhythmic coordination of brain activity over time is important because it allows overlapping populations of neurons to store different pieces of information at the same time.”

Fiebelkorn’s previous research around how the brain processes external information—like when navigating Times Square in New York City—made a similar discovery. He and fellow researchers found that brain rhythms help to coordinate different functions associated with either sampling presently important information or shifting to another source of information. In this context, brain rhythms help to balance focus on the task at hand with being prepared for the unexpected.

Possible ‘steps’ to revealing super-agers

Thursday, April 13, 2023

On the quest for the proverbial fountain of youth, scientists have long looked for evidence of super-agers—people whose brain ages slower than their body. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester have found older adults whose brain performance improves when they combine a cognitive task with walking.

“Identifying super-agers will leverage what we understand about the brain and aging,” said Eleni Patelaki, a Biomedical Engineering PhD student at the University of Rochester Medical Center and first author of the paper out today in NeuroImage. “But this is difficult to do because, in this case, there was no external evidence of this ability, and people are unaware that their brain is working differently.

Walking and doing exposes brain flexibility

Researchers had the participants complete the same cognitive task while sitting and while walking. The 37 men and women, ages 62 to 79, scored similarly while sitting. When the same group repeated the test while walking, researchers found some individuals improved their cognitive performance. Researchers used Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) to observe these changes and measure how the brain responded to the dual task. “We think this brain activity might constitute signatures of ‘super-aging,” said Patelaki. “We were able to find seven people, and now that we know where and how to look in the brain to find these super-agers, we can find more.”

The participants whose cognition improved while walking showed that their brain was able to adapt to and improve at the task—it had flexible usage of certain frontal resources. But those same people lost their flexibility in using the rest of their neural resources, similar to their peers who did not improve at the task while walking. This suggests that the brain’s ability to adapt or its flexibility in reallocating neural resources while walking might be an important factor in protecting cognition as we age.

The stars in the brain may be information regulators

Friday, March 31, 2023

URMC researcher, Nathan A. Smith,MS, PhD, explores how astrocytes may be a key player in the brain’s ability to process external and internal information simultaneously. He argues research on these cells is necessary to understand their role in the process that allows a person to have an appropriate behavioral response and also the ability to create a relevant memory to guide future behavior.

Iron & the brain: Where and when neurodevelopmental disabilities may begin during pregnancy

Monday, March 6, 2023

Study finds possible cellular origin for impairments associated with gestational iron deficiency

The cells that make up the human brain begin developing long before the physical shape of the brain has formed. This early organizing of a network of cells plays a major role in brain health throughout the course of a lifetime. Numerous studies have found that mothers with low iron levels during pregnancy have a higher risk of giving birth to a child that develops cognitive impairments like autism, attention deficit syndrome, and learning disabilities. However, iron deficiency is still prevalent in pregnant mothers and young children.

The mechanisms by which gestational iron deficiency (GID) contributes to cognitive impairment are not fully understood. The laboratory of Margot Mayer- Proschel, PhD, a professor of Biomedical Genetics and Neuroscience at the University of Rochester Medical Center, was the first to demonstrated that the brains of animals born to iron-deficient mice react abnormally to excitatory brain stimuli, and that iron supplements giving at birth does not restore functional impairment that appears later in life. Most recently, her lab has made a significant progress in the quest to find the cellular origin of the impairment and have identified a new embryonic neuronal progenitor cell target for GID. This study was recently published in the journal Development.

“We are very excited by this finding,” Mayer-Proschel said, who was awarded a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development in 2018 to do this work. “This could connect gestational iron deficiency to these very complex disorders. Understanding that connection could lead to changes to healthcare recommendations and potential targets for future therapies.”

Through the eye of the beholder: People with autism may process illusory shapes differently

Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Researchers are finding the process in our brain that allows us to see these visual distinctions may not be happening the same way in the brains of children with autism spectrum disorder. They may be seeing these illusions differently.

There is this picture – you may have seen it. It is black and white and has two silhouettes facing one another. Or maybe you see the black vase with a white background. But now, you likely see both.

It is an example of a visual illusion that reminds us to consider what we did not see at first glance, what we may not be able to see, or what our experience has taught us to know – there is always more to the picture or maybe even a different image to consider altogether. Researchers are finding the process in our brain that allows us to see these visual distinctions may not be happening the same way in the brains of children with autism spectrum disorder. They may be seeing these illusions differently.

“How our brain puts together pieces of an object or visual scene is important in helping us interact with our environments,” said Emily Knight, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Neuroscience and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and first author on a study out today in the Journal of Neuroscience. “When we view an object or picture, our brains use processes that consider our experience and contextual information to help anticipate sensory inputs, address ambiguity, and fill in the missing information.”

Small, involuntary eye movements help us see a stable world

Thursday, February 23, 2023

Our eyes are never at rest. Instead, they remain in motion, even between our voluntary gaze shifts, through fixational eye movements—small, continuous movements of the eye that we are not aware of making.

Scientists have long sought to understand how we humans can perceive the world as stable as our eyes are constantly moving. Past research has suggested that, in the intervals between voluntary gaze shifts, the human visual system builds a picture of a stable world by relying solely on sensory inputs from fixational eye movements. According to new research by a team at Rochester, however, there may be another contributing factor.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers—including Michele Rucci, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and, and first author Zhetuo Zhao, a PhD student in Rucci’s lab—report that the visual system not only receives sensory inputs from fixational eye movements but also possesses knowledge of the motor behavior involved in those movements.

Can hearing loss be reversed? Research in Patricia White's lab reveals clues that could regrow the cells that help us hear

Monday, February 13, 2023

Taking a bite of an apple is considered a healthy choice. But have you ever thought about putting in earplugs before your favorite band takes the stage?

Just like your future body will thank you for the apple, your future ears (specifically your cochlear hair cells) will thank you for protecting them. The most common cause of hearing loss is progressive because these hair cells—the primary cells to detect sound waves—cannot regenerate if damaged or lost. People who have repeated exposure to loud noises, like military personnel, construction workers, and musicians, are most at risk for this type of hearing loss. But, it can happen to anyone over time (even concert goers).

On the other hand, birds and fish can regenerate these hair cells, and now researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience are getting closer to identifying the mechanisms that may promote this type of regeneration in mammals, as explained in research recently published in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.

“We know from our previous work that expression of an active growth gene, called ERBB2, was able to activate the growth of new hair cells (in mammals), but we didn’t fully understand why,” said Patricia White, PhD, professor of Neuroscience and Otolaryngology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. The 2018 study led by Jingyuan Zhang, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the White lab at the time, found that activating the growth gene ERBB2 pathway triggered a cascading series of cellular events by which cochlear support cells began to multiply and activate other neighboring stem cells to become new sensory hair cells.

Researchers identify neurons that "learn" to smell a threat

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Whether conscious of it or not, when entering a new space, we use our sense of smell to assess whether it is safe or a threat. In fact, for much of the animal kingdom, this ability is necessary for survival and reproduction. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester are finding new clues to how the olfactory sensory system aids in threat assessment and have found neurons that “learn” if a smell is a threat.

Julian Meeks, PhD

“We are trying to understand how animals interact with smell and how that influences their behavior in threatening social and non-social contexts,” said Julian Meeks, PhD, principal investigator of the Chemosensation and Social Learning Laboratory. “Our recent research gives us valuable tools to use in our future work and connects specific sets of neurons in our olfactory system to the memory of threatening smells.”

Kerry O'Banion speaks with Medical News Today

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Gut-brain connection: 3 fatty acids may be linked to tau-mediated damage

As the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) continues to increase, the search for ways to treat and prevent it is ever more pressing. Newly licensed treatments, such as aducanumab and lecanemab, that clear beta-amyloidTrusted Source from the brain are a positive development, but they are expensive and controversial.

Many researchers are now focusing on other areas, one of which is the effect of the microbiomeTrusted Source — microbes, particularly bacteria, that inhabit the gut — on neurodegenerative disorders.

. "There is growing recognition of a gut-brain axis and evidence that the microbiome of individuals varies with disease status," said O'Banion. "The biggest issue is understanding whether gut changes are due to disease or contribute to disease (or both)."