As he explains, in mammals, it's difficult or impossible to look at the neural mechanisms that translate a choice into an action due to the complexity of the neural computation, the amount of neurons involved and therefore the complexity of the phase change produced by the movement of the animal.To reduce these complexities, Katz and colleagues will study foraging decisions during a very simple animal, the nudibranch mollusk Berghia stephanieae. This nudibranch has fewer than 4,000neurons and that they are identifiable as individuals or as members of particular classes.
Katz says, “Sea slugs have most of the neurotransmitters that we do but fewer neurons. we will learn general principles by studying such simple animals because they are doing have behaviors and that they do have motivation.”
This project, which can involve collaborating researchers at Harvard University , Rosalind Franklin University and therefore the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego , will map the synaptic connectivity of the brain, referred to as the “connectome,” by serially sectioning the brain and reconstructing neurons and synapses from microscopy images.
The RNA expressed by each of the neurons within the brain are going to be sequenced and transcriptomes mapped onto each neuron within the connectome, Katz says. visit Transgenic animals are going to be produced, allowing the team to optically record the activity of neurons because the animal produces behavior. The pattern of activity will then be mapped onto the schematic of the brain to work out how signals are skilled the network and the way that network changes because the animal matures.
CONFRONTING THE SIDE EFFECTS OF a standard ANTI-CANCER TREATMENT
AMHERST, Mass. – Results of a replacement study by neuroscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggest that a replacement treatment approach is required – and the way this might be possible – to deal with adverse effects of aromatase inhibitors, drugs commonly prescribed to both men and ladies to stop recurrence of estrogen-positive carcinoma .
The current drug therapy is linked to such complaints as hot flashes, memory lapses, anxiety and depression, side effects so bothersome that some patients discontinue the life-saving treatment, the researchers means . Their study found that aromatase inhibitors do indeed suppress estrogen synthesis in body tissues, but their unexpected findings within the brain could explain a number of the negative effects and supply insight into simpler , less disruptive future therapies.
Neuroscientists Agnès Lacreuse, Luke Remage-Healey and their graduate students at UMass Amherst, collaborator Jessica Mong at the University of Maryland and first author Nicole Gervais worked together on this research. Gervais, who conducted the experiments as a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst, is now at the University of Toronto. The authors studied alittle group of aged male and feminine marmosets, non-human primates whose brains are very similar to humans’ and which exhibit “complex behavior,” senior author Lacreuse explains.