Nerve Cells

An international research team led by Professor Stephanie Grond from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Tübingen has found that the natural substance collinolactone reduces artificially-induced stress on nerve cells, protecting them from the kind of damage that occurs in neurode more

We can remember things longer if we take breaks during learning. This phenomenon is known as the spacing effect. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology have gained deeper insights into the neuronal basis for this in mice. With longer time intervals between learning repetitions, the more

In addition to plaques that accumulate outside of nerve cells in the brain, Alzheimer’s disease is also characterised by changes inside these cells. Researchers from the Cell Signalling research group at the Chair of Molecular Biochemistry at RUB, headed by Dr. Thorsten Müller, have been studying wh more

by Deena R. Schmidt, Roberto F. Galán, Peter J. Thomas Nerve cells produce electrical impulses (“spikes”) through the coordinated opening and closing of ion channels. Markov processes with voltage-dependent transition rates capture the stochasticity of spike generation at the cost of complex, tim more

by Alexander Borst Seeing the direction of motion is essential for survival of all sighted animals. Consequently, nerve cells that respond to visual stimuli moving in one but not in the opposite direction, so-called ‘direction-selective’ neurons, are found abundantly. In general, direction select more

Three nearly identical genes could help explain why the ancestral human brain tripled in size over the course of human evolution. The genes, descendants of an ancient developmental gene that multiplied and changed over time, could also explain how brain development sometimes goes wrong, leading to n more