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Neuroscience News from the UR Community

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New imaging technique helps predict how vision recovers after brain tumor removal

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Understanding recovery process could have implications for many different injuries of the central nervous system

An interdisciplinary team of University neuroscientists and neurosurgeons has used a new imaging technique to show how the human brain heals itself in just a few weeks following surgical removal of a brain tumor.

In a study featured on the cover of the current issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine, the team found that recovery of vision in patients with pituitary tumors is predicted by the integrity of myelin—the insulation that wraps around connections between neurons—in the optic nerves.

“Before the study, we weren’t able to tell patients how much, if at all, they would recover their vision after surgery,” explained David Paul, an M.D. candidate in the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, and first author of the study.

When pituitary tumors grow large, they can compress the optic chiasm, the intersection of the nerves that connect visual input from the eyes to the brain. Nerve compression can lead to vision loss, which usually improves after these tumors are surgically removed.

Paul and his colleagues used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to show how changes in a particular bundle of nerve fibers relate to vision changes in these patients.

“DTI measures how water spreads in tissue,” explained Bradford Mahon, assistant professor in the Department Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Department of Neurosurgery, and senior author of the study. “The myelin insulation normally prevents water from spreading within the nerves, which would cause the nerves to malfunction.”

Read More: New imaging technique helps predict how vision recovers after brain tumor removal

Mice injected with human brain cells get smarter, scientists say

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

What would Stuart Little make of it? Mice have been created whose brains are half-human. As a result, the animals are smarter than their siblings. The idea is not to mimic fiction but to advance understanding of human brain diseases by studying them in whole mouse brains rather than in laboratory dishes.

The altered mice still have mouse neurons - the thinking cells that make up around half of all their brain cells. But practically all their glial cells, the ones that support the neurons, are human.

It’s still a mouse brain, not a human brain, says Steve Goldman of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. But all the non-neuronal cells are human.

Read More: Mice injected with human brain cells get smarter, scientists say

Blows to Head Damage Brain's 'Garbage Truck', Accelerate Dementia

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Pictures of MRI

A new study out today in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that traumatic brain injury can disrupt the function of the brain's waste removal system. When this occurs, toxic proteins may accumulate in the brain, setting the stage for the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

We know that traumatic brain injury early in life is a risk factor for the early development of dementia in the decades that follow, said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the University of Rochester Center for Translational Neuromedicine and senior author of the article. This study shows that these injuries set into motion a cascading series of events that impair the brain's ability to clear waste, allowing proteins like tau to spread throughout the brain and eventually reach toxic levels.

The findings are the latest in a series of new insights that are fundamentally changing the way scientists understand neurological disorders. These discoveries are possible due to a study published in 2012 in which Nedergaard and her colleagues described a previously unknown system of waste removal that is unique to the brain which researchers have dubbed the glymphatic system.

Read More: Blows to Head Damage Brain's 'Garbage Truck', Accelerate Dementia

Researchers Using New Tools to Fight Brain Infection

Monday, November 17, 2014