Sensory loss leads to widespread adaptation of neural circuits to mediate cross-modal plasticity, which allows the organism to better utilize the remaining senses to guide behavior. While cross-modal interactions are often thought to engage multisensory areas, cross-modal plasticity is often prominently observed at the level of the primary sensory cortices. One dramatic example is from functional ...
Posted 9 months ago
Synaptic vesicle release is regulated by upwards of 30 proteins at the fusion complex alone, but disruptions in any one of these components can have devastating consequences for neuronal communication. Aberrant molecular responses to calcium signaling at the pre-synaptic terminal dramatically affect vesicle trafficking, docking, fusion, and release. At the organismal level, this is reflected in di...
Posted 9 months ago
The so-called active zones at pre-synaptic terminals are the ultimate filtering devices, which couple between action potential frequency and shape, and the information transferred to the post-synaptic neurons, finally tuning behaviors. Within active zones, the release of the synaptic vesicle operates from specialized “release sites.” The (M)Unc13 class of proteins is meant to define release si...
Posted 9 months ago
Currently, there are no disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or any
other dementia subtype. The renaissance in psychedelic research in recent years, in
particular studies involving psilocybin and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), coupled with
anecdotal reports of cognitive benefits from micro-dosing, suggests that they may have a
therapeutic role in a range of psy...
Posted 9 months ago
The function of synapses depends on spatially and temporally controlled molecular interactions between synaptic components that can be described in terms of copy numbers, binding affinities, and diffusion properties. To understand the functional role of a given synaptic protein, it is therefore crucial to quantitatively characterise its biophysical behaviour in its native cellular environment. Sin...
Posted 9 months ago
Microglia are resident immune cells in the central nervous system and play critical roles in brain immunity, development, and homeostasis. The pathology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) triggers activation of microglia. Microglia express many AD risk genes, suggesting that their response to AD pathology can affect disease progression. Microglia have long been considered a homogenous cell population. ...
Posted 9 months ago
From the myriad of studies on neuronal plasticity, investigating its underlying molecular mechanisms up to its behavioral relevance, a very complex landscape has emerged. Recent efforts have been achieved toward more naturalistic investigations as an attempt to better capture the synaptic plasticity underpinning of learning and memory, which has been fostered by the development of in vivo electrop...
Posted 9 months ago
Understanding the mechanisms by which long-term synaptic plasticity is expressed
remains an important objective in neuroscience. From a physiological perspective,
the strength of a synapse can be considered a consequence of several parameters
including the probability that a presynaptic action potential (AP) evokes the release of
neurotransmitter, the mean number of quanta of transmitt...
Posted 9 months ago
The retromer complex mediates export of select transmembrane proteins from
endosomestothetrans-Golgi network (TGN) or to the plasma membrane. Dysfunction of
retromer has been linked with slowly progressing neurodegenerative disorders, including
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease (AD and PD). As these disorders affect synapses
it is of key importance to clarify the function of retromer...
Posted 9 months ago
The complexity and delicacy of human brain make it challenging to recapitulate its
development, function and disorders. Brain organoids derived from human pluripotent
stem cells (PSCs) provide a new tool to model both normal and pathological human
brain, and greatly enhance our ability to study brain biology and diseases. Currently,
human brain organoids are increasingly used in modeling n...
Posted 9 months ago
