(Press-News.org) A new study out today in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that traumatic brain injury can disrupt the function of the brain's waste removal system. When this occurs, toxic proteins may accumulate in the brain, setting the stage for the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
"We know that traumatic brain injury early in life is a risk factor for the early development of dementia in the decades that follow," said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the University of Rochester Center for Translational Neuromedicine and senior author of the article. "This study shows that these injuries set into motion a cascading series of events that impair the brain's ability to clear waste, allowing proteins like tau to spread throughout the brain and eventually reach toxic levels."
The findings are the latest in a series of new insights that are fundamentally changing the way scientists understand neurological disorders. These discoveries are possible due to a study published in 2012 in which Nedergaard and her colleagues described a previously unknown system of waste removal that is unique to the brain which researchers have dubbed the glymphatic system.
The brain is essentially closed off from the rest of the body by a complex system of molecular gateways, called the blood-brain barrier, that tightly control what enters and exits the brain. Consequently, the body's normal waste removal system does not extend to the brain.
As with the rest of the body, the timely removal of waste from the brain is essential to prevent the unchecked accumulation of toxic proteins and other debris. However, until recently no one was entirely clear how the brain accomplished this.
Nedergaard and her colleagues showed that mice, whose brains are remarkably similar to humans, possess what amounts to a plumbing system that piggybacks on blood vessels to pump cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), the fluid surrounding the brain, through brain tissue, flushing away the waste from the spaces between the brain's cells.
Recent studies have shown that the glymphatic system is more active during sleep, which may explain why sleep is so refreshing to the mind, and that its function declines with age.
"The failure of the glymphatic system may be one of the reasons that the aging brain is so vulnerable to diseases like Alzheimer's," said Jeffrey Iliff, Ph.D., co-author of study, a member of Nedergaard's research team, and an assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University. "It's striking that the same changes that we see in the aging brain are mirrored in the young brain after traumatic brain injury. It suggests that these events may be the common link to neurodegeneration, between what happens in the elderly and what happens after brain trauma."
The new research focuses on the impact that traumatic brain injury has on the glymphatic system. It has been long observed that the protein tau plays an important role in the long-term damage sustained by the brain after a trauma. Tau helps stabilize the fibers, or axons, that nerve cells send out to communicate with their neighbors.
However, during trauma, large numbers of these proteins are shaken free from the axons to drift in the space between the brain's cells. Once unmoored from nerve cells, these sticky proteins are attracted to each other and, over time, form increasingly larger "tangles" that can become toxic to brain function.
Under normal circumstances, the glymphatic system is able to clear stray tau from the brain. However, when the researchers studied the brains of mice with traumatic brain injury, they found that the trauma damaged the glymphatic system, specifically the ability of astrocytes - a support cell found in the brain - to regulate the cleaning process.
Astrocytes play a critical role in organizing the flow of CSF into the brain. Branches from the cells enclose the brain's blood vessels creating a space- essentially a pipe within a pipe - into which CSF can follow the path of the blood vessels and flow into the interior of the brain. The branches of the astrocytes that form the outer "pipe" are lined with a massive number of structures known as water channels - or aquaporins - that help ensure the efficient flow of CSF along the blood vessels into and out of the brain. The researchers observed that after traumatic brain injury, the aquaporins lose their organization, impairing the flow of CSF into the brain.
"In order to clear waste the glymphatic system must pump CSF through the brain," said Nedergaard. "This study would seem to indicate that the system is very delicate and that small changes in the organization of water channels can cause it to lose function."
Long after the injury, the researchers noted that the excess tau was not being cleared from the animals' brains and that tau had begun to aggregate throughout the brain. In animals with impaired aquaporin water channels, tau accumulated far more rapidly.
The researchers also had the animals perform a series of experiments to test their memory and cognitive abilities. The animals with traumatic brain injury all performed far worse than controls. Animals with impaired water channels function did even worse and showed no improvement over time.
"For a long time, we have viewed neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's as a supply problem, meaning that we believed the brain was producing too much tau or amyloid beta," said Benjamin Plog, an M.D./Ph.D. student in Nedergaard's lab and a co-author of the study. "It now appears that these conditions may ultimately be linked to a clearance problem, where something is preventing the glymphatic system from removing waste from the brain fast enough."
INFORMATION:
Additional co-authors include Michael Chen, Lijun Yang, Itender Singh, and Rashid Deane with the University of Rochester, and Douglas Zeppenfeld with the Oregon Health and Science University. The study was supported with funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the American Heart Association.
A group of researchers tested whether monkeys show a common human bias: the tendency to confuse the price of a good with its quality. Previous studies have shown that humans think wine labeled with an expensive price tag tastes better than the same wine labeled with a cheaper price tag. In other studies, people thought a pain killer worked better when they paid a higher price for it.
"We know that capuchin monkeys share a number of our own economic biases. Our previous work has shown that monkeys are loss averse, irrational when it comes to dealing with risk, and even ...
In a new study published today in the journal Frontiers in Neurology, a team of researchers led by the University of Surrey, have identified a rogue protein in multiple sclerosis, which attacks the body's central nervous system. Researchers believe this finding could pave the way for better understanding of multiple sclerosis and new treatments against neurodegenerative diseases.
Scientists have previously known that rogue proteins cause brain damage in other diseases of the brain such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
In this study, scientists ...
Although some guidelines recommend use of bisphosphonates (a class of drugs used to strengthen bone) for men on androgen deprivation therapy, an analysis finds that prescriptions for these drugs remains low, even for those men at high risk of subsequent fractures, according to a study in the December 3 issue of JAMA.
Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is an effective, widely used therapy for men with prostate cancer. Adverse effects include bone loss and increased fracture risk. Canadian guidelines recommended bisphosphonate use in men with osteoporosis or fragility ...
In at least one respect, Capuchin monkeys are smarter than humans -- they don't assume a higher price tag means better quality, according to a new Yale study appearing in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology.
People consistently tend to confuse the price of a good with its quality. For instance, one study showed that people think a wine labeled with an expensive price tag tastes better than the same wine labeled with a cheaper price tag. In other studies, people thought a painkiller worked better when they paid a higher price for it.
The Yale study shows ...
Irvine, Calif., Dec. 2, 2014 - A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade.
The glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica are hemorrhaging ice faster than any other part of Antarctica and are the most significant Antarctic contributors to sea level rise. This study is the first to evaluate and reconcile observations from four different measurement techniques to produce an authoritative estimate of the amount and the rate of loss over the ...
ARGONNE, Ill. ― A team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Ohio University have devised a powerful technique that simultaneously resolves the chemical characterization and topography of nanoscale materials down to the height of a single atom.
The technique combines synchrotron X-rays (SX) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). In experiments, the researchers used SX as a probe and a nanofabricated smart tip of a STM as a detector.
Using this technique, researchers detected the chemical fingerprint of individual ...
West Orange, NJ. December 2, 2014. Stroke researchers have found that the presence of frontal lesions predicts better functional improvement in individuals with spatial neglect who received prism adaptation therapy. "Integrity of medial temporal structures may predict better improvement of spatial neglect with prism adaptation treatment" (doi: 10.1007/s11682-012-9200-5) was published in September in the Neuroimaging and Rehabilitation Special Issue of Brain Imaging & Behavior. The authors are Peii Chen, PhD, Priyanka Shah, and A.M. Barrett, MD, of Kessler Foundation, Kelly ...
To arrange for an interview with a researcher, please contact the Communications staff member identified at the end of each tip. For more information on ORNL and its research and development activities, please refer to one of our media contacts. If you have a general media-related question or comment, you can send it to news@ornl.gov.
IMAGING - Clearer brain scans ...
A clever signal noise reduction strategy developed by a team that includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Ben Lawrie could dramatically improve brain imaging. By using quantum correlated beams of light, ...
New Rochelle, NY, December 2, 2014--A study of active duty U.S. Marines who suffered a recent or previous concussion(s) examined whether persistent post-concussive symptoms (PPCS) and lingering effects on cognitive function are due to concussion-related brain trauma or emotional distress. The results are different for a recent concussion compared to a history of multiple concussions, according to the study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available Open Access on the Journal of Neurotrauma ...
DURHAM, N.H. - Environmentalists dispirited by the Republicans' dominance of the recent midterm elections can take heart: non-Tea Party Republicans' views on science and environmental issues are closer to those of Independents than to Tea Party supporters. That's the primary finding of new research by University of New Hampshire sociologists, published this week in the journal Environmental Politics.
"Across a range of science and environmental issues, non-Tea Party Republicans are more similar to Independents than they are to Tea Party supporters, and those divisions ...
