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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thetransmitter.org | Sydney Wyatt |Emily Willingham |Anne West |Angie Voyles Askham
When Floyd Bloom was in high school in the early 1950s, he took an aptitude test, and the results suggested he would excel at jobs in communication, such as journalism or advertising. But that was not what his family envisioned for him. His father, who had wanted to be a doctor himself and who revered the profession, pushed for medical school.
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Dec 9, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Armin Raznahan |Rachel Buckley |Mark Humphries |Anne West
Human males and females show profound differences in the prevalence and presentation of numerous brain-related conditions. In neurology, for example, males have a greater risk of Parkinson’s disease and tend to develop the disease earlier and with more severe cognitive impairments. Females have higher rates of multiple sclerosis, but their symptoms progress more slowly than in males. In psychiatry, all early-onset neurodevelopmental conditions are more prevalent in males than in females.
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Dec 3, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Jill Adams |Charles Choi |Mark Humphries |Anne West
Home Curating neuroscience, connecting community An editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Mark Humphries |Ben Scott |Anne West |Paul Middlebrooks
Imagine the ultimate systems neuroscience paper. What it looks like could tell us much about where neuroscience, and how we communicate it, is going. Extrapolating from the evolution of systems neuroscience over the past century, we might envisage something like this:It begins by reporting the activity of every neuron in the brain of a human across their lifespan, from birth to death.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Anne West |Megan Peters |Robert C. Froemke |Steve Ramirez
Answers have been edited for length and clarity. What paper changed your life? Histone demethylation mediated by the nuclear amine oxidase homolog LSD1. Shi Y., Lan F., Matson C., Mulligan P., Whetstine J.R., Cole P.A., Casero R.A. and Yang S. Cell (2004)In this paper, Yang Shi and his colleagues reported the first histone demethylase—an enzyme that removes methyl groups from chromatin to regulate DNA transcription—which they named lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1).
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Aug 28, 2024 | 00574-9?rss=yes&sz=64)
cell.com | Anne West |Michael Greenberg
References1. Wiesel, T.N.Postnatal development of the visual cortex and the influence of environmentNature. 1982; 299:583-5912. Katz, L.C. ∙ Shatz, C.J.Synaptic activity and the construction of cortical circuitsScience. 1996; 274:1133-11383. Hua, J.Y. ∙ Smith, S.J.Neural activity and the dynamics of central nervous system developmentNat. Neurosci. 2004; 7:327-3324. Malenka, R.C. ∙ Bear, M.F.LTP and LTD: an embarrassment of richesNeuron. 2004; 44:5-215.
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Apr 24, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Gina Jimenez |Jill Adams |Angie Voyles Askham |Anne West
When Carlos Cardenas-Iniguez joined the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study in 2021, his new colleagues were all talking about race, he recalls. Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd the previous year had prompted serious dialogue in many sectors, and science was no exception.
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Angie Voyles Askham |Jill Adams |Anne West
The ability of amphibians to metamorphosize and, in some cases, regenerate limbs and even brain tissue raises puzzling yet fundamental questions about how a nervous system wires itself up. For example, if a frog’s legs don’t exist when its brain begins to develop—those limbs later replace its tadpole tail—how are the neural connections maintained such that, once the legs take shape, a frog can move them? “How many connections are there between the spinal cord and the brain?
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Apr 23, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Jill Adams |Angie Voyles Askham |Anne West
Here is a roundup of autism-related news and research spotted around the web for the week of 22 April. Contributing writer Share this article: Tags: Spectrum, Autism, Science and society, Spotted Mental health patterns differ for people with specific disruptive variants in genes associated with autism, according to a study in 65 youth.
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Apr 22, 2024 | 
thetransmitter.org | Anne West
In the children’s story “Fish is Fish,” a minnow and a tadpole celebrate their identity as fellow fish until the tadpole grows legs and hops out of the pond as a frog. The story reminds us that a collection of features observed at any one point in time is only a snapshot along the trajectory of any living thing, be it a cell or a more complex organism.
