INFORMATION:
Pain differs: Researchers unveil distinct neural circuits
2021-03-22
(Press-News.org) Clinically, multiple lines of evidence show that chronic pain and depressive symptoms are frequently encountered. Patients suffered from both pain and depression are likely to become insensitive to drug treatment, indicating a refractory disease. The neural mechanism under this comorbidity remains unclear.
In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, the research team led by Prof. ZHANG Zhi and Dr. LI Juan from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), reported the discrete thalamocortical circuits underlying the pain symptom caused by tissue injury and depression-like states.
Being the gateway towards cerebral cortex and considered as the major source of 'nociceptive neurons' at the highest level of the nervous system in anesthetized animals, the thalamus integrates physical signals of emotions and pains and projects them to the cortex through thalamocortical structure for differentiating and processing. Thus, the thalamocortical circuits for pain processing is a hot spot in research.
Taking advantage of mouse models of tissue-injury-associated allodynia as well as in vivo calcium imaging and multi-tetrode electrophysiological recordings, the researchers found an enhanced circuit from posterior thalamic nucleus (PO) to primary somatosensory cortex (S1) under tissue-injury conditions, .
Interestingly, for mice in depression-like states, who also displayed significant allodynia, regulation of the PO -> S1 circuit failed to take effect. What mediates the depression associated pain sensitization is another pathway from the parafascicular thalamic nucleus (PF) to anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
These results provide a new insight into the pathogenesis of physical pain.
The novel understanding of the neural circuit may add to the precision of these targeting therapy strategies in clinical use as physical intervention of specific brain regions or neural circuits is the current treatment option toward drug-insensitive neurological diseases.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Researchers use AI to estimate focal mechanism parameters of earthquake
2021-03-22
The research team led by Prof. ZHANG Jie from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences made progress on real-time determination of earthquake focal mechanism through deep learning. The work was published in Nature Communications.
Since there are connections between characteristics of the rupture surface of the source fault and seismic wave radiated by the source, it's vital to monitor the earthquake by immediate determination of the source focal mechanism which inferred from multiple ground seismic records.
However, it's hard to calculate the mechanism from the simple ...
Atomic techniques reveal the evolution of a bacterial protein
2021-03-22
A combination of an array of atomic-level techniques has allowed researchers to show how changes in an environment-sensing protein enable bacteria to survive in different habitats, from the human gut to deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
"The study gives us unprecedented atomic-level insight into how bacteria adapt to changing conditions," says Stefan Arold, professor of bioscience at KAUST. "To obtain these insights, we pushed the limits of three different methods of investigation and combined their results into a unified picture."
The histone-like nucleoid-structuring (H-NS) protein allows bacteria to sense changes in their environment, such as changes in temperature and salinity. Previously, the team had shown how the intestinal pathogen Salmonella typhimurium ...
Human fondness, faith in machines grows during pandemic
2021-03-22
People are not very nice to machines. The disdain goes beyond the slot machine that emptied your wallet, a dispenser that failed to deliver a Coke or a navigation system that took you on an unwanted detour.
Yet USC researchers report that people affected by COVID-19 are showing more goodwill -- to humans and to human-like autonomous machines.
"The new discovery here is that when people are distracted by something distressing, they treat machines socially like they would treat other people. We found greater faith in technology due to the pandemic and a closing of the gap between humans and machines," said Jonathan Gratch, senior author of the study and director for virtual humans research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies.
The findings, which appeared recently ...
Bacteria may aid anti-cancer immune response
2021-03-22
Cancer immunotherapy may get a boost from an unexpected direction: bacteria residing within tumor cells. In a new study published in Nature, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and their collaborators have discovered that the immune system "sees" these bacteria and shown they can be harnessed to provoke an immune reaction against the tumor. The study may also help clarify the connection between immunotherapy and the gut microbiome, explaining the findings of previous research that the microbiome affects the success of immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy treatments of the past decade or so have dramatically improved recovery rates from certain ...
United States ranks lowest in overall policies to help parents support children
2021-03-22
National work-family policies that give lower-income families more time together while allowing them paid time off are more effective for children's psychological health than cash transfers, according to a study of developed nations led by Baylor University.
In a study of about 200,000 children in 20 developed nations, the United States ranked lowest in overall policies aimed at helping parents support children.
The study, published in the journal Social Forces, supports the view of critics who say that the United States government does not do enough to mandate ...
Does 'harsh parenting' lead to smaller brains?
2021-03-22
Repeatedly getting angry, hitting, shaking or yelling at children is linked with smaller brain structures in adolescence, according to a new study published in Development and Psychology. It was conducted by Sabrina Suffren, PhD, at Université de Montréal and the CHU Sainte?Justine Research Centre in partnership with researchers from Stanford University.
The harsh parenting practices covered by the study are common and even considered socially acceptable by most people in Canada and around the world.
"The implications go beyond changes in the brain. I think what's ...
Lung cancer resistance: the key is glucose
2021-03-22
Cancers are not only made of tumor cells. In fact, as they grow, they develop an entire cellular ecosystem within and around them. This "tumor microenvironment" is made up of multiple cell types, including cells of the immune system, like T lymphocytes and neutrophils.
The tumor microenvironment has predictably drawn a lot of interest from cancer researchers, who are constantly searching for potential therapeutic targets. When it comes to the immune cells, most research focuses on T lymphocytes, which have become primary targets of cancer immunotherapy ...
Global biodiversity awareness tracked with Wikipedia page views
2021-03-22
Wikipedia page views could be used to monitor global awareness of biodiversity, proposes a research team from UCL, ZSL, and the RSPB.
Using their new metric, the research team found that awareness of biodiversity is marginally increasing, but the rate of change varies greatly between different groups of animals, as they report in a paper included in an upcoming special section of Conversation Biology.
Lead author, PhD student Joe Millard (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences and Institute of Zoology, ZSL) said: "As extinctions and biodiversity losses ramp up worldwide, largely due to climate change and other human actions, it's vital that ...
Motherless gorillas beat the odds
2021-03-22
A study by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund shows that gorilla families come together to support young gorillas that lose their mothers.
The findings, published in the journal eLife, use the Fossey Fund's more than 50-year dataset to discover how maternal loss influences young gorillas' social relationships, survival and future reproduction. The study shows when young mountain gorillas lose their mothers, the rest of the group helps buffer the loss by strengthening their relationships with the orphans.
"Mothers are incredibly important for survival early in life--this is something that is shared across all mammals," said lead author Dr. Robin Morrison. "But in social mammals, like ourselves, mothers often continue to provide vital support up to adulthood and even beyond."
"In ...
Expressing some doubts about android faces
2021-03-22
Osaka, Japan - Researchers from the Graduate School of Engineering and Symbiotic Intelligent Systems Research Center at Osaka University used motion capture cameras to compare the expressions of android and human faces. They found that the mechanical facial movements of the robots, especially in the upper regions, did not fully reproduce the curved flow lines seen in the faces of actual people. This research may lead to more lifelike and expressive artificial faces.
The field of robotics has advanced a great deal over the past decades. However, while current androids can appear very humanlike at first, their active facial expressions may still be unnatural and slightly unsettling to us. The exact reasons ...