Brain’s waste-clearance pathways revealed for the first time

OHSU study uses imaging in neurosurgery patients to show how brain’s glymphatic system clears waste; lifestyle measures can keep system sharp

Originally published by Erik Robinson on October 07, 2024 Portland, Oregon

Erin Yamamoto, M.D., and Juan Piantino, M.D., are among the co-authors of a new study from Oregon Health & Science University that used imaging of neurosurgery patients to definitively reveal the existence of waste-clearance pathways in the human brain known as the glymphatic system. (OHSU/Christine Torres Hicks).

Scientists have long theorized about a network of pathways in the brain that are believed to clear metabolic proteins that would otherwise build up and potentially lead to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. But they had never definitively revealed this network in people — until now.

A new study involving five patients undergoing brain surgery at Oregon Health & Science University provides imaging of this network of perivascular spaces — fluid-filled structures along arteries and veins — within the brain for the first time.

 

Juan Piantino, M.D. (OHSU)

“Nobody has shown it before now,” said senior author Juan Piantino, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics (neurology) in the OHSU School of Medicine and a faculty member of the Neuroscience Section of the Papé Family Pediatric Research Institute at OHSU. “I was always skeptical about it myself, and there are still a lot of skeptics out there who still don’t believe it. That’s what makes this finding so remarkable.”

Read more

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First map of every neuron in an adult brain has been produced for a fruit fly

Image
Originally published by UK Research and Innovation on October 2, 2024   3D rendering of all ~140k neurons in the fruit fly brain. Credit: Data source: FlyWire.ai; Rendering by Philipp Schlegel (University of Cambridge/MRC LMB). The first wiring diagram of every neuron in an adult brain and the 50 million connections between them has been produced for a fruit fly . This landmark achievement has been conducted by a large international collaboration of scientists , called the FlyWire Consortium , including researchers from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology ( in Cambridge, UK ), Princeton University, the University of Vermont and the University of Cambridge . It is published in a pair of papers in Nature . The diagram of all 139,255 neurons in the adult fly brain is the first of an entire brain for an animal that can walk and see . Previous efforts have completed the whole brain diagrams for much smaller brains , for example, for that of a fruit fly larva, whi...
Read more

Research finds resin that destroys coronavirus on plastic surfaces

Image
O riginally published by University of Jyväskylä, on January 30, 2024 Studying the impact of rosin-functionalized plastic and standard LDPE on the structure of HCoV-OC43 using (A) TEM and (B) AFM in liquid. The scale bar corresponds to 100 nm and 1 µm in the TEM and AFM images, respectively. In panel B, the blue circle highlights a doughnut-shaped virus. (C) The histogram derived from the AFM images illustrates the average size distribution of the height of individual viruses after being flushed from their respective surfaces. Credit: Microbiology Spectrum (2024). DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.03008-23 Researchers at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland , are currently developing anti-viral surfaces to decrease the spread of infectious diseases. A recent study published in Microbiology Spectrum found that a resin ingredient is effective against coronaviruses and strongly decreases their infectivity on plastic surfaces. Viruses may persist on solid surfaces for long periods, which ma...
Read more

Engineered Rabies Virus Illuminates Neural Circuitry

Image
Originally published by Hannah Thomasy, PhD, for the Scientist on June 14, 2024 Scientists turned a deadly virus into a crucial tool for understanding the wiring of the brain.   Rabies labeling helps scientists identify neurons in the primary visual cortex that connect to two different higher visual brain regions. Marina Garrett  In 1906 , pathologist Camillo Golgi and neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal won the Nobel Prize for their work on the structure of the nervous system . More than a century later, the puzzle of nervous system organization —the intricately tangled mess that results from each neuron’s connections to thousands of others— remains incomplete . Yet, fully developing scientific understanding of these connections is crucial , said Edward Callaway , a systems neurobiologist at the Salk Institute . “If you don’t have some knowledge about how the different parts are interacting , there’s no way to generate a hypothesis about how they’re working toget...
Read more