In 1928, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the founder of modern neuroscience, wrote that the brains of adult humans never make new neurons. “Once development was ended,” he proclaimed, “the founts of growth and regeneration … dried up irrevocably. In the adult centers the nerve paths are something fixed, ended and immutable. Everything must die, nothing […]
Contrary to what was thought some years ago, the adult central nervous system is capable of generating new neurons, some of which are integrated into functional circuits and seem to be essential for processes such as memory and learning. The question of why these new neurons are not capable of replacing those lost in neurodegenerative […]
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. Its cell body presents many expansions with numerous fine processes, amazingly mobile, with which they […]
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 Cell, one of the best in the world, about neurexins, one of the most interesting […]
Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind and body characterized by altered consciousness, relatively repressed sensory inputs, inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles, and reduced interactions with surroundings. We spend around one third of our lives sleeping although why we sleep is still theme of debate. Sleep seems to assist animals with improvements in […]
Predation is a biological interaction between a hunting organism, the predator, and another organism that is hunted, the prey. Predators may hunt actively for prey in pursuit predation, or sit and wait for prey as in ambush predators. In all cases, it is a complex behavior requiring honed skills and perfect and fast coordination among […]
For a while, new evidence has been accumulating linking the gut microbiota to brain function. A new paper published recently in Cell Reports, shows that the intermediary is a type of white blood cell, evidencing as well the relationship between the brain and the immune system. While the crosstalk between the peripheral immune system and […]
Chimera was a monster from the Greek mythology, a hybrid creature usually depicted as a lion, with the head of a goat arising from its back and a tail ending in a snake. In biology, the term «chimera» is used for a single organism with genetically distinct cells from two different zygotes, also a hybrid […]
The number of people who speak one language (monolinguals) is rather small today , with many of us growing up with more than one language or learning another one during our lifetime. Language experts argue that what counts as speaking two languages (bilingualism) is not only a matter of the number of languages we speak […]
In multicellular organisms, embryonic stem cells develop into any of the different cell types that will form the adult, and along the development, they silence or activate different parts of the genome, giving rise to distinct cell identities, which are maintained throughout adult life by epigenetic mechanisms. A similar procedure may be at work at […]