Sentences with phrase «olfactory nerve cells»

One of the precursors to Alzheimer's disease, which attacks the brain's nerve cells, is a loss of smell, so understanding this connection to olfactory nerve cells could perhaps serve as a diagnostic tool and perhaps unlock a deeper understanding of the degenerative disorder.

A team led by Linda Buck of Harvard Medical School in Boston was able to test this proposition with mouse olfactory nerve cells.

Each olfactory nerve cell expresses just one of these olfactory genes to produce a receptor that recognizes a related set of odors.

Using flourescence imaging, the scientists tested calcium response (an important nervous system ion implicated in the symptoms of bipolar disorder) in olfactory nerve cell samples from 17 bipolar patients (10 currently taking medication, 7 medication - free) with those of matched controls.

Not exact matches

Samuel Weiss, director of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary, and his colleagues reported that nerve cells sprouted in the olfactory bulb, the seat of the sense of smell, and in the hippocampus, the brain's memory bank.

The presence of the dead, snarled nerve cells and sticky protein fragments characteristic of Alzheimer's in the main smell - processing structures of these deceased patients could suggest the disease gets its start in the olfactory system.

Duke University biologist Pelin Volkan and colleagues have identified a set of genetic control switches that interact early in a fly's development to generate dozens of types of olfactory neurons, specialized nerve cells for smell.

Studies in rats and dogs have already demonstrated that olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), which insulate bundles of nerve cells, can help repair damage to the spinal cord and nerves leading to animals» paws.

In that work, scientists removed olfactory ensheathing cells from the noses of dogs with complete spinal cord injuries, and injected them at the site of the severed nerves.

Lawrence Katz of the Duke University Medical Center and his colleagues discovered that once signals reach the accessory olfactory bulb they are mapped out into distinct patterns of nerve cell activity that vary according to the traits that enable a mouse to identify desirable mates, such as species and sex.

Even differentiating between two rose varieties can be a snap because the human olfactory system — made up of the nerve cells in our noses and everything that allows the brain to process smell — is quite adept.