The adult brain has a very limited capacity for regeneration. However, researchers have updated the role of a key membrane molecule in the proliferation of stem cells in the adult mouse brain: Syndecan-1. CEA, Inserm and the Paris-Sud and Paris Diderot universities have joined forces to demonstrate that Syndecan-1, present in the membrane of the neural stem cells, permits their proliferation. Syndecan-1 therefore becomes a possible tracer of brain...
Teams of AP-HP, Inserm and Université Paris Sud, studied as part of an international research group, depressions called "subsyndromal" among young teenagers as they have a high risk to progress to depression in adolescence and later in adulthood.
Imagine that you are eating a Granny apple under a red parasol on the terrace of a public garden. The next day you eat another Granny apple at home in your kitchen, but soon afterwards find yourself ill. The next time you go back to the public garden, you avoid sitting under that red parasol. While there may not seem to be a link between the parasol and the...
Des chercheurs de l’Inserm et de l’Université Grenoble Alpes ont révélé un nouveau réseau cérébral qui relie la douleur ressentie dans la maladie de Parkinson à une région spécifique du cerveau. Ces travaux, paru dans la revue eLife, révèlent qu’un sous-ensemble de neurones situé dans une partie du cerveau appelée noyau sous-thalamique serait une cible potentielle pour soulager la douleur dans la maladie de Parkinson, ainsi que dans d’autres...
Inserm researchers at I-Stem – the Institute for Stem Cell Therapy and Exploration of Monogenic Diseases – report encouraging results with metformin, a known diabetes drug, for the symptomatic treatment of Steinert myotonic dystrophy. A phase II trial conducted in 40 patients at Henri-Mondor Hospital AP-HP has shown that, after 48 weeks of treatment at the highest dose, patients treated with metformin (versus placebo) gain in motor skills and recover...
In recent years, the cognitive neurosciences have shown that it is possible to use conscious effort to alter memories. Researchers from the Inserm Center for Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Sainte Anne Hospital and Université Paris Descartes now show that it is possible to unconsciously alter memories. This experimental demonstration of the unconscious manipulation of memories, which is similar to the psychoanalytical concept of repression, has been published in the journal...
Individuality exists in all animals, and a number of factors shape it over time. For mice, one of those factors is the social environment, as researchers at CNRS, INSERM and Sorbonne Université have just shown. In this species, some stable character traits may even be inscribed in an individual’s neuron activity and change when the group’s composition changes. These results are published on August 6, 2018 in Nature Communication.
Why are some depressed patients more or less totally resistant to the most commonly-prescribed antidepressants? This question was addressed by researchers from Inserm
And what if, depending on the age at which it develops, hypertension had more or less significant consequences on maintaining our cognitive function? This was suggested by a study conducted by an Inserm team in partnership with the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London which has been monitoring changes in blood pressure and the onset of dementia in more than 10,000 volunteers since 1985. This...
Will the radiology of the future come from machine learning? That is the view of Inserm and Inria researchers working in collaboration at the Université Grenoble Alpes who have developed a program able to localize and diagnose various types of brain tumors via MRI image analysis. These analyses have produced highly reliable results, with tumor localizations and tumor-type diagnoses accurate in 100% and over 90% of cases, respectively. This...
Do you tend to go for cake or vegetables? If you sometimes find it difficult to eat healthily, a study conducted by a team of researchers from Inserm, CNRS and Sorbonne Université, including Liane Schmidt and Hilke Plassmann, at the Brain & Spine Institute (ICM) has established a link between the anatomy of certain regions of our brain and our ability to control our food choices. These results were...
