Living beings are able to integrate and identify relevant sensory information, such as smells, sounds or light, in order to regulate how they behave in the presence of potential danger. This is called context discrimination. Inserm researchers based at Neurocentre Magendie in Bordeaux have recently discovered which neurons are implicated in this phenomenon and where they are located. Good news for sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder in whom context...
A veritable sensor: a team of Inserm and CNRS researchers at the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology (IPBS, CNRS/Paul Sabatier University – Toulouse III) has identified a protein that is able to detect various allergens in the respiratory tract, which are responsible for asthma attacks. This study, co-led by Corinne Cayrol and Jean-Philippe Girard, was published in Nature Immunology on March 19, 2018. It offers hope for breakthroughs...
Thanks to a study conducted in pregnant women and their unborn children during the Zika epidemic in the French territories in the Americas, researchers from Inserm, Institut Pasteur and the University Hospital of Guadeloupe have been able to accurately estimate the risk of severe neurological complications in babies. They have also determined that the first trimester of pregnancy is the period which presents the highest risk. While the overall...
Can genes normally expressed only in the eye be activated in brain tumours?
Des chercheurs ont mis en évidence le mécanisme responsable de l'installation et du maintien de la douleur chronique et proposent un prototype de traitement innovant avec un effet thérapeutique immédiat et durable.
Du 12 au 18 mars, à l’occasion de la Semaine du Cerveau 2018, le grand public est appelé à venir découvrir les derniers progrès en neurosciences à travers de nombreux événements gratuits :
Drug addiction behaviors and vulnerability to relapse are linked to our brain’s ability to produce new neurons. This is the finding of Inserm researchers from Neurocentre Magendie at the University of Bordeaux, after observing the behavior of mice taught to self-administer cocaine. Their results, to be published in Molecular Psychiatry, show a link between the deficient production of new neurons in the hippocampus and addiction to drugs.
Researchers from Inserm, CNRS and Aix Marseille University at the Center of Immunology Marseille-Luminy (CIML) have discovered that while a tattoo may be forever, the skin cells that carry the tattoo pigment are not. These cells transmit this pigment to new cells when they die. Acting on this process could improve current laser removal techniques. This study was published on March 6, 2018 in Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Thanks to work coordinated by Inserm and its researchers at the Center of Research in Epidemiology and Statistics Sorbonne Paris Cité (CRESS), French child health and immunization record booklets (carnets de santé) distributed from April 1, 2018 will contain new reference growth curves. These curves were devised according to a totally innovative method in which over 5 million measurements collected from children aged 0 to 18 years were analyzed....
The INSIGHT-preAD study, directed by Prof. Bruno Dubois, is being carried out by teams from Inserm, CNRS and Université Sorbonne at the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM) and the Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease Institute (IM2A) at AP-HP Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, in collaboration with the MEMENTO cohort. It aims at identifying factors underlying Alzheimer’s disease development in healthy subjects over 70 with no existing cognitive disorders. Sponsored by...