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Molecular Biology:

Hair pulling is a neuroimmunological condition

Category: Neuroscience

New research shows that trichotillomania (compulsive hair pulling) occurs as a result of defects in the brain's immune system, and can be alleviated by bone marrow transplants.

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'Wasabi receptor' is snake's infrared sensor

Category: Animal Behaviour

SNAKES have a unique sensory system for detecting infrared radiation, with which they can visualize temperature changes within their immediate environment. Using this special sense, they can image the body heat radiating from warm-blooded animals nearby. This enables them to...

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MicroRNAs regulate adult neurogenesis

Category: Neuroscience

Researchers from Columbia University Medical School have found that adult neurogenesis is regulated by a species of microRNA

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Zebrafish brainbow bioscape

Category: Developmental Biology

This beautiful image of the brain of a 5-day-old zebrafish larva, which was created by Albert Pan of Harvard University, has just won 4th place in the 2008 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging competition. (See a larger version here.) It...

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Memories are made of molecular motors

Category: Memory

Learning and memory are widely thought to involve long-term potentiation (LTP), a form of synaptic plasticity in which a neuron's response to the chemical signals it receives is enhanced. This leads to a strengthening of the neuronal circuit, so that...

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The fluorescent flashing shuttles of the enchanted loom

Category: Molecular Biology

In his 1941 book Man on His Nature, the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington described the brain as "an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern." Little could he have known that within 50 years...

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Prion protein infection mechanism identified

Category: Molecular Biology

The transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), which include variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans, "Mad Cow" Disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep, are progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the accumulation within nerve cells of an abnormally folded and insoluble...

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Neuronal light switches

Category: Neuroscience

The September issue of Scientific American contains an excellent and lengthy article about a state-of-the-art technique called optogenetics, by molecular physiologist Gero Miesenböck, who has been instrumental in its development. As its name suggests, optogenetics is a combination of optics...

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Cannibalism & the shaking death: A new form of the disease & a possible epidemic

Category: Neurodegeneration

National Library of Medicine / Hot Medical News This silent film clip shows several victims of a disease called kuru. They are - or rather were - members of the South Fore, a tribe of approximately 8,000 people who inhabit...

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The eye tells the brain when to plasticize

Category: Developmental Biology

The classic Nobel Prize-winning studies of David Hubel and Torsten Weisel showed how the proper maturation of the developing visual cortex is critically dependent upon visual information received from the eyes. In what would today be considered highly unethical experiments,...

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