PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Dopamine and hippocampus

2014-04-03
(Press-News.org) Montreal, April 3, 2014 – Bruno Giros, PhD, a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, has demonstrated, for the first time, the role that dopamine plays in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. Published in Biological Psychiatry, this discovery opens the door to a better understanding of psychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a central role in brain function, and many mental illnesses involve an imbalance in this chemical. What Bruno Giros has shown in particular is that dopamine is present in the hippocampus—the brain area associated with memory and learning—and that it plays a key role in this region.

"Our work helps us better understand some of the symptoms of schizophrenia for which the cause in the brain was unknown, particularly in the area of memory and learning. In a few years, this research could help researchers come up with new therapeutic approaches to improve these symptoms," explained Bruno Giros.

Dr. Giros is the Graham Boeckh Chair in Schizophrenia and the Canada Research Chair in Neurobiology of Mental Disorders. He is one of the world's leading scientists in the study and treatment of schizophrenia. In 1999, he created the Neurobiology and Psychiatry Laboratory at the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM) in France. He came to the Douglas Institute in 2008.

INFORMATION: For information and interviews: Florence Meney
Media Relations
Communications and Public Affairs Directorate
Douglas Mental Health University Institute
Dobell Pav.- 6875 LaSalle Blvd., B-2122 - Montreal, QC H4H 1R3
T. 514-761-6131, ext. 2769
Florence.meney@douglas.mcgill.ca

About the Douglas Institute – http://www.douglas.qc.ca The Douglas is a world-class institute affiliated with McGill University and the World Health Organization. It treats people suffering from mental illness and offers them both hope and healing. Its teams of specialists and researchers are constantly increasing scientific knowledge, integrating this knowledge into patient care, and sharing it with the community in order to educate the public and eliminate prejudices surrounding mental health.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

A once-only cataclysmic event and other mysteries of earth's crust and upper mantle

2014-04-03
Boulder, Colo., USA - The April 2014 Lithosphere is now available in print. Locations covered include the Acatlán Complex, Mexico; east Yilgarn craton, Australia; the eastern Paganzo basin, Argentina; the hotspot-related Yellowstone crescent, USA; and the western Alps. Locations investigated in four new papers published online on 2 April include the Banks Island assemblage in Alaska and British Columbia; The Diligencia basin of the Orocopia Mountains in California; a U.S. post-Grenville large igneous province; and South Island, New Zealand. Abstracts are online at http://lithosphere.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. ...

Energy breakthrough uses sun to create solar energy materials

Energy breakthrough uses sun to create solar energy materials
2014-04-03
CORVALLIS, Ore. – In a recent advance in solar energy, researchers have discovered a way to tap the sun not only as a source of power, but also to directly produce the solar energy materials that make this possible. This breakthrough by chemical engineers at Oregon State University could soon reduce the cost of solar energy, speed production processes, use environmentally benign materials, and make the sun almost a "one-stop shop" that produces both the materials for solar devices and the eternal energy to power them. The findings were just published in RSC Advances, ...

New tweetment: Twitter users describe real-time migraine agony

2014-04-03
ANN ARBOR—Someone's drilling an icicle into your temple, you're throwing up, and light and sound are unbearable. Yes, it's another migraine attack. But now in 140 characters on Twitter, you can share your agony with other sufferers. It indicates a trend toward the cathartic sharing of physical pain, as well as emotional pain on social media. "As technology and language evolve, so does the way we share our suffering," said principal investigator Alexandre DaSilva, assistant professor and director of the Headache and Orofacial Pain Effort at University of Michigan School ...

Indigenous societies' 'first contact' typically brings collapse, but rebounds are possible

2014-04-03
It was disastrous when Europeans first arrived in what would become Brazil -- 95 percent of its population, the majority of its tribes, and essentially all of its urban and agricultural infrastructure vanished. The experiences of Brazil's indigenous societies mirror those of other indigenous peoples following "first contact." A new study of Brazil's indigenous societies led by Santa Fe Institute researcher Marcus Hamilton paints a grim picture of their experiences, but also offers a glimmer of hope to those seeking ways to preserve indigenous societies. Even among ...

NASA's Aqua satellite flies over newborn Tropical Depression 05W

NASAs Aqua satellite flies over newborn Tropical Depression 05W
2014-04-03
The fifth tropical depression of the northwestern Pacific Ocean tropical cyclone season formed far from land as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and captured a visible image of the storm on April 4. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over newborn Tropical Depression 05W on April 3 at 03:10 UTC/April 2 at 11:10 p.m. EDT. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument captured a visible picture of the storm, revealing good circulation and strong convection and thunderstorms around the center of circulation. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC ...

Sanford-Burnham presents cancer research at AACR

2014-04-03
LA JOLLA, Calif., April 3, 2014 — Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute will present a wide range of new research data at the annual American Association for Cancer Research Meeting in San Diego starting Saturday, April 5, at the San Diego Convention Center. The presentations will cover a variety of topics including breast, melanoma, and prostate cancer, as well as novel methods of delivering drugs to tumors. If you are interested in interviewing a Sanford-Burnham researcher, please contact Susan Gammon at sgammon@sanfordburnham.org. Highlights of Sanford-Burnham's ...

A new approach to detecting changes in GM foods

2014-04-03
Does genetic manipulation causes unintended changes in food quality and composition? Are genetically modified (GM) foods less nutritious than their non-GM counterparts, or different in unknown ways? Despite extensive cultivation and testing of GM foods, those questions still linger in the minds of many consumers. A new study in the March issue of The Plant Genome demonstrates a potentially more powerful approach to answering them. In research led by Owen Hoekenga, a Cornell University adjunct assistant professor, scientists extracted roughly 1,000 biochemicals, or "metabolites," ...

Quantum cryptography for mobile phones

2014-04-03
Secure mobile communications underpin our society and through mobile phones, tablets and laptops we have become online consumers. The security of mobile transactions is obscure to most people but is absolutely essential if we are to stay protected from malicious online attacks, fraud and theft. Currently available quantum cryptography technology is bulky, expensive and limited to fixed physical locations – often server rooms in a bank. The team at Bristol has shown how it is possible to reduce these bulky and expensive resources so that a client requires only the ...

Fermi data tantalize with new clues to dark matter

Fermi data tantalize with new clues to dark matter
2014-04-03
VIDEO: This animation zooms into an image of the Milky Way, shown in visible light, and superimposes a gamma-ray map of the galactic center from NASA's Fermi. Raw data transitions to... Click here for more information. A new study of gamma-ray light from the center of our galaxy makes the strongest case to date that some of this emission may arise from dark matter, an unknown substance making up most of the material universe. Using publicly available data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray ...

Which couples who meet on social networking sites are most likely to marry?

Which couples who meet on social networking sites are most likely to marry?
2014-04-03
New Rochelle, NY, April 3, 2014—Nearly 7% of Americans married between 2005-2012 met on social networking sites. How those couples compare to couples who met through other types of online meetings or the "old-fashioned" way in terms of age, race, frequency of Internet use, and other factors is explored in an article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website. In "First Comes Social Networking, Then Comes ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Novel treatment combination improves progression-free survival in metastatic, estrogen-receptor-positive HER-2-negative breast cancer

ESMO 2025: Trial results show belzutifan shrinks rare neuroendocrine tumors and improves symptoms in patients

ESMO 2025: Dual targeted therapy shows promise in previously treated advanced kidney cancer patients

New generation of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) shows unprecedented promise in early-stage disease

Sylvester Cancer Tip Sheet for October 2025

Three science and technology leaders elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Jump Trading CSO Kevin Bowers elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Former Inscripta CEO Sri Kosaraju elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

Citadel’s Jordan Chetty elected to Hertz Foundation Board of Directors

McGill research flags Montreal snow dump, inactive landfills as major methane polluters

A lightweight and rapid bidirectional search algorithm

Eighty-five years of big tree history available in one place for the first time

MIT invents human brain model with six major cell types to enable personalized disease research, drug discovery

Health and economic air quality co-benefits of stringent climate policies

How immune cells deliver their deadly cargo

How the brain becomes a better listener: How focus enhances sound processing

Processed fats found in margarines unlikely to affect heart health

Scientists discover how leukemia cells evade treatment

Sandra Shi MD, MPH, named 2025 STAT Wunderkind

Treating liver disease with microscopic nanoparticles

Chemicals might be hitching a ride on nanoplastics to enter your skin

Pregnant patients with preexisting high cholesterol may have elevated CV risk

UC stroke experts discuss current and future use of AI tools in research and treatment

The Southern Ocean’s low-salinity water locked away CO2 for decades, but...

OHSU researchers develop functional eggs from human skin cells

Most users cannot identify AI bias, even in training data

Hurricane outages: Analysis details the where, and who, of increased future power cuts

Craters on surface of melanoma cells found to serve as sites for tumor killing

Research Spotlight: Mapping overlooked challenges in stroke recovery

Geographic and temporal patterns of screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer in the US

[Press-News.org] Dopamine and hippocampus