Category Archives: Neurobiology
Nociceptor inhibition as a new therapeutic approach for asthma
When we hear somebody wheezing, coughing, showing chest tightness and shortness of breath, most of us will immediately recognize the underlying cause: Asthma. This is not a minor issue, but one affecting approximately 5% of the entire world population […]
Microglia and autism
Microglial cells are the immune cells that reside in the central nervous system. They have phagocytic capacity, constitute 10% of the cells of the brain and form a fairly regular three-dimensional network in which each microglia has a unique territory. […]
Placebo and creativity
A placebo is a substance or treatment that does not contain any active ingredient or rest in a physiological procedure out of the placebo effect, but still achieves a real change. The placebo effect is a psychobiological phenomenon, but it […]
Neurexins and autism
Thomas C. Südhof (Göttingen, Germany, December 22, 1955) is a neurobiologist awarded in 2013 with the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his studies on the trafficking of vesicles in the cell. Südhof has just published an article in the journal […]
Novel strategies to selectively reduce pain
A recurrent problem with pain is the absence of therapeutic strategies to selectively block the nociceptors (neurons responsible to detect painful stimuli) that need to be targeted for a particular indication. Things get even worse if we take into account […]
Voles and the chemistry of love
The question of how human interaction works is a neurochemical one, but it’s not easy to solve. While many experiments cannot be performed on humans or primates, smaller laboratory animals are useless for this research due to their differences with […]
Postzygotic mutations in autism
The number of genes linked to autism has not stopped growing in the last decade. Although there are hundreds of variants that are more frequent in people who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) than in the general population, […]
Minibrains: a present from the tooth fairy
Stem cells can be cultured, multiplied and differentiated. By interacting with each other in this process of specialization they can follow organization programs that show striking similarities with what happens in the entire organism. This way you can form […]
Child obesity and brain function
The OECD report on obesity in Spain published in 2014 (PDF) presented worrying data: 1-in-6 adults is obese and more than half are overweight, including obesity. The percentage of obesity has grown in the last years and its prevalence […]
Intelligence: a mishmash of genetic ingredients
Like father like son. We have all heard it one time or another. The layman explanation to hereditary characters. Whether the cause is genetic inheritance or the effect of growing up in a certain environment, is quite something else. When […]