Scientists a step closer to understanding how anaesthetics work in the brain
... the potassium channel, preventing the neuron from firing at all meaning the neuron was effectively anaesthetised. The new research has identified a specific amino acid in the potassium channel which, when mutated, blocks anaesthetic activation. Lead author, Biophysics Professor Nick Franks from Imperia...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...ture of synaptic transmission and action potential firing produces variable (even unreliable) neuronal respo...eased during the pursuit phase. The variance in PC firing was predictive of trial-to-trial variance in behavioral responses at eye movement initiation. From t...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...red correlated activity in ER and PR that followed firing of mPFC neurons. Early in the training, mPFC firing evoked an increased correlation between ER and PR firing, but in no particular direction. As learnin...Scientists propose the kind of chemistry that led to life
...er well-studied process: different rates of neuron firing in the brain lead to new connections between neurons and ultimately to the mature wiring pattern of the brain. Similarly, social ants first search randomly, then discover food, and finally build a short-term memory for the entire colony using chemica...Neuronal activity gives clues to working memory
...f activity in the absence of input -- a persistent firing rate -- that's finely coordinated across related g...ting that excitation is essential to the sustained firing that working memory requires. "The real surprise came when we turned off many of the inhibitory p...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...roved during anesthesia, but many trials evoked no firing whatsoever. IC firing was not significantly influenced by anesthesia. The authors propose that AI responses in the awake a...A living memory chip, black holes on the loose, and a clearer picture of ocean currents
...versity used an array of electrodes to monitor the firing patterns in a network of linked neurons. As previo...und that they could deliberately create additional firing patterns that coexist with the spontaneous patterns. They claim that these new firing patterns essen...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
... unit recordings, BLA neurons also increased their firing to unpredictable stimuli, whereas cell firing habituated to predictable stimuli. Unpredictable stimuli also provoked anxiety-like behavior in the ...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...tor neurons. Expiratory neurons with an augmenting firing pattern (EAUGs) are inhibitory premotor neurons of the laryngeal adductor muscle. The authors made simultaneous extracellular recordings of EAUGs and intracellular recordings from laryngeal motoneurons in anesthetized cats. During fictive breathing, ...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...ms in sympathetic ganglion neurons, regulates cell firing in many cell types. These potassium channels, comp...nd noninactivating, thus reducing action potential firing to sustained stimuli. As per the name, muscarine blocks M-current. This week, Crozier et al. examine...Information processing in the central nervous system: the signalling system controlling movement
...inal interneurones exhibit a remarkable variety of firing patterns in response to a pulse of injected curren...ss both motor commands and sensory inputs. Steady firing interneurones integrate these inputs, while bursting neurons may emphasize input variations and sing...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...#946;- hydroxybutyrate or acetoacetate) slowed the firing of these cells by ~10%. Pharmacological activation of normally silent K ATP channels also slowed or silenced neuronal firing. The ketone-induced slowing was absent in mice lacking the Kir6.2 subunit of K ATP channels in plasma membranes. In a twist...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...from a population of neurons and measured the mean firing rate response from single neurons. The mPFC neurons displayed a sigmoidal increase in firing rate with a maximal frequency of ~40C60 Hz. The neurons remained highly sensitive to input current f...When your brain talks, your muscles don't always listen
...tly published the results of a study on motor-unit firing rates in the Journal of Applied Physiology, and Kn...orce--which is indicated by a corresponding higher firing rate of neurons--is exerted just before you begin the upturn toward one peak and then it eases off a...Light-activated compound silences nerves, may one day help epileptics
...g and shone a light on the cells, the seizure-like firing pattern calmed. If the drug is adapted for epilep...ght would activate the drug only when seizure-like firing patterns started to appear. Scientists in the laboratory of Douglas F. Covey, Ph.D., professor of m...Studies identify DNA regions linked to nicotine dependence
... cells and inhibitory mechanisms those that slow firing between nerve cells. "An imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory activity in the brain may predispose people to addiction, such as alcoholism, drug dependence or nicotine dependence," says Laura Jean Bierut, M.D., associate professor of psychia...News tips from the Journal of Neuroscience
...ound that the cells displayed high frequency burst firing during SWDs. Next, the authors locally injected a ...ntranigral block eliminated SWDs and converted the firing pattern in VM neurons from burst firing to sustained arrhythmic firing. Cortical neuron activity als...Thinking with the spinal cord?
...y underlying movements, show the similar irregular firing patterns as seen in the cerebral cortex. New approach "Our findings contradict conventional wisdom about spinal cord functions," says Rune W. Berg from Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology at the Faculty of Health Sciences. Until now, ...How appetite-stimulating brain cells work overtime during fasting
...s mechanism is critical in sustaining an increased firing rate in these [hunger-stimulating] cells so that appetite remains elevated during fasting," Diano's group concluded. "Overall, our study provides strong evidence for an interplay between local T3 production and UCP2 during fasting and reveals a centr......howed position invariant responses. That is, their firing was selective for a narrow band of orientations, and the preferred orientation was the same in any location across the finger pad. The range of response properties indicated that tuning results from a region of pure position invariance, bands of exci...