Fragile X Makes Brain Cells Talk to Much

Fragile X Makes Brain Cells Talk Too Much

Feb. 20, 2013 — The most common inherited form of mental retardation and autism, fragile X syndrome, turns some brain cells into chatterboxes, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report.

The extra talk may make it harder for brain cells to identify and attend to important signals, potentially establishing an intriguing parallel at the cellular level to the attention problems seen in autism.

According to the researchers, understanding the effects of this altered signaling will be important to developing successful treatments for fragile X and autism.

"We don't know precisely how information is encoded in the brain, but we presume that some signals are important and some are noise," says senior author Vitaly Klyachko, PhD, assistant professor of cell biology and physiology. "Our theoretical model suggests that the changes we detected may make it much more difficult for brain cells to distinguish the important signals from the noise." ....


 
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Diet, Parental Behavior, and Preschool Can Boost Children's IQ

Diet, Parental Behavior, and Preschool Can Boost Children's IQ

From ScienceDaily.com

Girl at preschool. Supplementing children's diets with fish oil, enrolling them in quality preschool, and engaging them in interactive reading all turn out to be effective ways to raise a young child's intelligence, according to a new report. (Credit: © Serhiy Kobyakov / Fotolia)

Jan. 25, 2013 — Supplementing children's diets with fish oil, enrolling them in quality preschool, and engaging them in interactive reading all turn out to be effective ways to raise a young child's intelligence, according to a new report published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Using a technique called meta-analysis, a team led by John Protzko, a doctoral student at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, combined the findings from existing studies to evaluate the overall effectiveness of each type of intervention. In collaboration with NYU Steinhardt professors Joshua Aronson and Clancy Blair, leaders in the field of intelligence, Protzko analyzed the best available studies involving samples of children from birth and kindergarten from their newlyassembled "Database of Raising Intelligence."

"Our aim in creating this database is to learn what works and what doesn't work to raise people's intelligence," said Protzko. "For too long, findings have been disconnected and scattered throughout a wide variety of journals. The broad consensus about what works is founded on only two or three very high-profile studies." ...

"The larger goal here is to understand the nature of intelligence, and if and how it can be nurtured at every stage of development," said Aronson, Protzko's advisor. "This is just a first step in a long process of understanding. It is by no means the last word. In fact, one of the main conclusions is how little high quality research exists in the field and how much more needs to be done."  ...

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Potential to Prevent, Reverse Disabilities in Children Born Prematurely, Study Suggest

Potential to Prevent, Reverse Disabilities in Children Born Prematurely, Study Suggests

Jan. 17, 2013 — Physician-scientists at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children's Hospital are challenging the way pediatric neurologists think about brain injury in the pre-term infant. In a study published online in the Jan. 16 issue of Science Translational Medicine, the OHSU Doernbecher researchers report for the first time that low blood and oxygen flow to the developing brain does not, as previously thought, cause an irreversible loss of brain cells, but rather disrupts the cells' ability to fully mature. This discovery opens up new avenues for potential therapies to promote regeneration and repair of the premature brain. 

When fetal brains are exposed to decreased oxygen and blood flow (hypoxia and ischemia), the neurons do not appear to mature normally. On the left is a tracing of a brain cell (neuron) from a control (Con) animal showing normal development of its complex branching pattern. On the right is a tracing of a neuron of the same age as the control, which was exposed to a brief period of hypoxia/ischemia (HI). This cell displays fewer processes and a simpler branch pattern. Thus, despite being the same age as the control animal, brain cells in the HI animal are more immature. (Credit: Oregon Health & Science University)

"As neurologists, we thought ischemia killed the neurons and that they were irreversibly lost from the brain. But this new data challenges that notion by showing that ischemia, or low blood flow to the brain, can alter the maturation of the neurons without causing the death of these cells. As a result, we can focus greater attention on developing the right interventions, at the right time early in development, to promote neurons to more fully mature and reduce the often serious impact of preterm birth. We now have a much more hopeful scenario," said Stephen Back, M.D., Ph.D., lead investigator and professor of pediatrics and neurology in the Papé Family Pediatric Research Institute at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital.....

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