Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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locus coeruleus

Galanin: the ‘keep calm and carry on’ hormone?

A few celebrity neuropeptides have acquired a reputation – sometimes exaggerated — and a flavor, corresponding to their functions in the brain.

Oxytocin has the aura of a “cuddle hormone” because of its role in social bonding and reproduction. Endorphins are the body’s natural pain-killers, long thought to be responsible for “runner’s high.” Hypocretin/orexin, missing in narcolepsy, is a stabilizer of wakefulness as well as motivation.

Galanin, studied by Emory neuroscientist David Weinshenker’s lab, is not as flashy as other neuropeptides. While it is accumulating an intriguing track record, galanin appears to play subtly different roles depending on where it is expressed. It is tempting to call galanin the “keep calm and carry on” hormone, but the research on galanin is so complex it’s difficult to pin down.

Graduate student Rachel Tillage and colleagues have a paper this week in Journal of Neuroscience detailing how galanin’s production by one group of neurons in the brainstem confers stress resilience in mice.

This image shows the rough location for the locus coeruleus in the human brain. In mice, production of galanin in the locus coeruleus cushions against stress.

The new paper shows that exercise increases galanin in the locus coeruleus, a region in the brainstem that produces norepinephrine (important for attention, alertness, anxiety and muscle tone). Galanin can provide protection against the anxiety-inducing effects of artificial but very specific locus coeruleus activation by optogenetics.

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Posted on September 3, 2020 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

The blue spot: where seeds of destruction begin

Neuroscientist and geneticist David Weinshenker makes a case that the locus coeruleus (LC), a small region of the brainstem and part of the pons, is among the earliest regions to show signs of degeneration in both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. You can check it out in Trends in Neurosciences.

The LC is the main source of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine in the brain, and gets its name (Latin for “blue spot”) from the pigment neuromelanin, which is formed as a byproduct of the synthesis of norepinephrine and its related neurotransmitter dopamine. The LC has connections all over the brain, and is thought to be involved in arousal and attention, stress responses, learning and memory, and the sleep-wake cycle.

Cells in the locus coeruleus are lost in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s. From Kelly et al Acta Neuropath. Comm. (2017) via Creative Commons

The protein tau is one of the toxic proteins tied to Alzheimer’s, and it forms intracellular tangles. Pathologists have observed that precursors to tau tangles can be found in the LC in apparently healthy people before anywhere else in the brain, sometimes during the first few decades of life, Weinshenker writes. A similar bad actor in Parkinson’s, alpha-synuclein, can also be detected in the LC before other parts of the brain that are well known for damage in Parkinson’s, such as the dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra.

“The LC is the earliest site to show tau pathology in AD and one of the earliest (but not the earliest) site to show alpha-synuclein pathology in PD,” Weinshenker tells Lab Land. “The degeneration of the cells in both these diseases is more gradual. It probably starts in the terminals/fibers and eventually the cell bodies die.” Read more

Posted on July 3, 2018 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Explainer: the locus coeruleus

The locus coeruleus is a part of the brain that has been getting a lot of attention recently from Emory neuroscience researchers.

The locus coeruleus is the biggest source of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine in the brain. Located deep in the brainstem, it has connections all over the brain, and is thought to be involved in arousal and attention, stress, memory, the sleep-wake cycle and balance.

Researchers interested in neurodegenerative disease want to look at the locus coeruleus because it may be one of the first structures to degenerate in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In particular, the influential studies of German neuro-anatomist Heiko Braak highlight the locus coeruleus as a key “canary in the coal mine” indicator of neurodegeneration.

That’s why neurologist Dan Huddleston, working with biomedical imaging specialists Xiangchuan Chen and Xiaoping Hu and colleagues at Emory, has been developing a method for estimating the volume of the locus coeruleus by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Their procedure uses MRI tuned in such a way to detect the pigment neuromelanin (see panel), which accumulate in both the locus coeruleus and in the substantia nigra. Read more

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment