Insulin, long recognized as a primary regulator of blood glucose, is now also understood to play key roles in neuroplasticity, neuromodulation, and neurotrophism.
Insulin, long recognized as a primary regulator of blood glucose, is now also understood to play key roles in neuroplasticity, neuromodulation, and neurotrophism.
Telomeres are repetitive, noncoding sequences that cap the ends of linear chromosomes. They consist of hexameric nucleotide sequences (TTAGGG in humans) repeated hundreds to thousands of times. Telomeres protect the protein-coding sequences of DNA on
A transition-state mimic has the power to bind an enzyme at its tipping point as strongly as any available inhibitor and more strongly than most, preventing enzymatic activity. In order to replicate the structure of an enzyme’s transition state, whic
Vitamin D has a variety of actions in the body. It binds to the vitamin D receptor (VDR), which then binds to the retinoid X receptor (RXR) and activates the expression of numerous genes. Through this mechanism, vitamin D promotes calcium absorption
Not all inflammation leads to pain. Despite widespread infection followed by fever, colds rarely cause pain. But when some cytokines and certain immune cells are active near pain-sensing nerves, they trigger receptors that convey pain sensations to t
In fewer than 15 years, nanomedicine has gone from fantasy to reality.
Looking for a more realistic way to study memory, we turned to place cells—a network of cells that record a rat’s memory of an environment. Each place cell would fire only when the rat was in one particular location in space, creating a map as the
Long-term potentiation (LTP), discovered in the 1970s, was later shown to be the molecular basis of memory. Since many diseases of aging affect memory, could memory formation and storage be altered by the same mechanisms in normal aging and diseased
Early on, researchers had learned that the hippocampus was the structure in the brain where long-term memories were created and stored, but it was not known whether the different cell types within this structure might be more or less susceptible to t
The initiating cause of Alzheimer’s disease is still unknown. However, from our studies it’s clear that many types of neuronal damage—from traumatic brain injury, to epilepsy, infection, or genetic predisposition—can activate brain immune cells—