Our developing brains demand the right nutrients at the right times. This sustenance provides essential energy for cellular processes that underlie brain formation. But what happens if these substances aren’t available? Professor Gaia Novarino’s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has shown that a shortage of essential amino acids results in severe developmental problems in mice and humans causing lasting effects in life.

Possible target for drugs to combat the yo-yo effect

Many people who have dieted are familiar with the yo-yo effect: after the diet, the kilos are quickly put back on. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research and Harvard Medical School have now shown in mice that communication in the brain changes during a diet: The nerve cells that mediate the feeling of hunger receive stronger signals, so that the mice eat significantly more after the diet and gain weight more quickly. In the long term, these findings could help developing drugs to prevent this amplification and help to maintain a reduced body weight after dieting.

Human beings are bilaterally symmetrical. As such, our brains are made of two halves called hemispheres, that communicate with each other with specialized fiber tracts running across the midline. While each hemisphere tends to deal with the senses (vision, hearing, touch) and motor control of the opposite side of the body, we are generally not aware of this partitioning of function, thanks to constant inter-hemispheric communication. In humans, the two hemispheres are also specialized for certain functions: language areas, for example, are typically in the left hemisphere.

Why we can’t keep our hands off chocolate bars and co.

Chocolate bars, crisps and fries – why can’t we just ignore them in the supermarket? Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne, in collaboration with Yale University, have now shown that foods with a high fat and sugar content change our brain: If we regularly eat even small amounts of them, the brain learns to consume precisely these foods in the future.

The human immunodeficiency virus HIV-1 is able to infect various tissues in humans. Once inside the cells, the virus integrates its genome into the cellular genome and establishes persistent infections. The role of the structure and organisation of the host genome in HIV-1 infection is not well understood. Using a cell culture model based on brain immune microglia cells, an international research team led by scientists from Heidelberg University Hospital and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) now defined the insertion patterns of HIV-1 in the genome of microglia cells.

Clinical trials are a milestone in the development of safe and effective drugs and therapies. An antibody developed by Helmholtz Munich is now entering a phase 1 clinical trial. Together with the radiopharmaceutical company ITM Isotope Technologies Munich and Münster University Hospital, researchers hope to improve the treatment of patients with brain tumors.

Sex differences exist in the regulation of energy homeostasis. Current studies indicate for instance that female mammals, including humans, are better protected against metabolic diseases during reproductive age. This is particularly important with regard to obesity, whose prevalence has tripled since 1975. However, it is still not fully understood how hormones, released by sex-specific reproductive glands, signal to the brain to regulate energy metabolism in females versus males. Researchers at Helmholtz Munich pursued the question and discovered a new protein called Cited1 within hypothalamic neurons that is involved in the regulation and sensitivity of satiety pathways.

In autoimmune encephalitis, a rare but serious and sometimes life-threatening inflammation of the central nervous system, the body’s own defences are directed against the central nervous system. This disease was first identified in 2007, and the most common type is Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. In this autoimmune disease, a protein that plays an important role in signal transmission in the brain is disrupted: the NMDA-type glutamate receptor, or NMDA receptor for short. Researchers from Braunschweig, Jena, Leipzig and Berlin have developed a new potential treatment for this disease.

When one travels through rough terrain, maps come in handy. They also help researchers to study the complex organization of the brain. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence have created a new set of maps for the zebrafish brain. They determined the activity of hundreds of genes with single-cell resolution and assembled the maps into an interactive atlas. The online resource supports researchers in finding their way around the brain of this vertebrate and provides new insights into neural structure and function.

A new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research uses computer simulations to explore how patterns of spikes propagate in neuronal networks constrained by experimental data from the turtle visual cortex. The researchers found that rare but strong connections in the network could promote the reliability of propagation, providing a substrate to easily halt or promote propagation, resulting in a highly reliable system to route activity within these networks. The research provides insight into how neurons in the brain communicate with one another and how this communication can be reliably controlled.

For cats with outdoor access, feline meningoencephalomyelitis, better known as “staggering disease”, is a serious and potentially fatal threat. The disease, which involves the inflammation of the brain and spinal cord in European domestic cats (Felis catus), was first described in Sweden in the 1970s and in Austria in the 1990s. Now, some 50 years after the first discovery of the disease, a team of researchers affiliated with several institutions including the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, has finally been able to identify the rustrela virus, a relative of the rubella virus that infects humans, as the cause.

Anyone who has ever had a night of poor sleep or no sleep at all knows how much the lack of sleep can affect concentration the next day. Researchers at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors have studied how exactly sleep deprivation affects brain performance. The results show that not only brain activation, but also the alteration of connections between neurons is affected by sleep deprivation. Both have a significant effect on memory performance and working memory.

Astrocytes, small star-shaped cells, play an important role in signal transmission in the brain. Since the protein Ezrin is found abundantly in astrocyte tendrils, it is presumed to play a role in brain function. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute on Aging – Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena, Germany, have conducted in vivo studies on the function and role of Ezrin in brain development and the adult brain. While a lack of Ezrin has little effect on development, it does alter signal processing and the shape of astrocytes. These effects appear to effectively mitigate the toxicity of neurotransmitters, particularly glutamate, and thus protect mice from stress (e.g., stroke).

How is it possible for the brain to recognise drawn objects as houses or animals? In a recent study in the Journal of Neuroscience, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, in collaboration with the Freie Universität Berlin and Justus Liebig University Giessen, investigated how our perception of line drawings differs from natural images. The researchers show that the perception of objects is particularly robust to changes in our environment.

How can you trace a single diseased cell in an intact brain or a human heart? The search resembles looking for a needle in a haystack. The teams of Ali Ertürk at Helmholtz Munich and LMU Munich and Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich have now developed a new technology named DISCO-MS that solves the problem. DISCO-MS uses robotics technology to obtain proteomics data from ‘sick’ cells precisely identified early in the disease.

In a largely neglected brain region, scientists identified neurons that produce the stress hormone CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone). They showed that the CRH produced in this region plays a role in behavioral arousal, locomotor activation, and avoidance behavior. The findings could be important for the understanding of psychiatric diseases.

The gene-silencing complex HUSH might be involved in complex disorders affecting the brain and neurons. However, its mechanism of action remains unclear. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) now uncover the in vivo targets and physiological functions of a component of the HUSH gene-silencing complex and one of its associated proteins. The work, conducted in laboratory mouse models and human brain organoids, links the HUSH complex to normal brain development, neuronal individuality and connectivity, as well as mouse behavior. The findings are published in Science Advances.

Red has a signaling and warning effect. Is this color specificity also reflected in the brain? Researchers at the Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience have investigated this question.

Researchers from Dresden uncover a greater neuron production in the frontal lobe during brain development in modern humans than Neandertals, due to the change of a single amino acid in the protein TKTL1.

During development, lack of sensory experience elicits powerful plasticity mechanisms that alter brain circuitry. Many inhibitory neuron subtypes are known to influence circuit dynamics, however, how they interact with plasticity is not yet fully understood. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt have investigated how synaptic plasticity in rodents, who were deprived of vision in one eye, affects network activity in a circuit model of the sensory cortex. Their findings point to the role of different inhibitory interneuron subtypes to explain the temporal pattern of firing rate change of excitatory and inhibitory neurons during sensory deprivation.

Dresden and Leipzig researchers find that stem cells in the developing brain of modern humans take longer to divide and make fewer errors when distributing their chromosomes to their daughter cells, compared to those of Neanderthals.

Copper exposure in the environment and the protein alpha-synuclein in the human brain could play an important role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease. A team from Empa and the University of Limerick was able to show how the protein takes on an unusual shape when exposed to large amounts of copper ions. The findings could help develop new strategies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

The analysis of the human brain is a central goal of neuroscience. However, for methodological reasons, research has largely focused on model organisms, in particular the mouse. Now, neuroscientists gained novel insights on human neural circuitry using tissue obtained from neurosurgical interventions. Three-dimensional electron microscope data revealed a novel expanded network of interneurons in humans compared to mouse. The discovery of this prominent network component in the human cortex encourages further detailed analysis of its function in health and disease.

During an epileptic seizure, groups of neurons suddenly fire all at once, leading to involuntary movements and sensations. Possibilities for helping those who suffer from epilepsy are limited. EpiBlok Therapeutics GmbH was recently founded by scientists from Charité and the Medical University of Innsbruck. The company is developing a type of gene therapy in which an adeno-associated virus transports the gene for the neuropeptide dynorphin into selected neurons of the affected brain region. The goal is the long-term suppression of seizures, by having the neurons produce a reserve supply of dynorphin that can be released when needed.

Neurons in the lateral horn of the brain of vinegar flies evaluate individual odors and mediate the resulting odor-guided behavior. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology report in a new study in eLife that higher brain centers are able to filter odor information from the environment and transform the fly’s outside world into a neuronal representation in the brain. The resulting behavior ensures survival and reproduction of the fly.