Sentences with phrase «synaptic pruning»

The researchers also unexpectedly found that the Bax gene, known for its role in apoptosis, appears to also play a role in synaptic pruning in the dentate gyrus.

These experiments looked for signs of synaptic pruning in the mice but weren't able to directly observe the process occurring.

Specifically, converging lines of evidence suggest that mechanisms such as oxidative stress and extracellular matrix (ECM) deficit may contribute to the functional impairment of PV neurons, leading to aberrant developmental synaptic pruning of prefrontal cortex neural circuitry and hence a failure in the maintenance of synaptic stability.

Further research showed that fetal mice bred to lack these molecules — like animals lacking MHCI, and like humans with autism or schizophrenia — undergo inadequate synaptic pruning in some parts of their brains.

Overactive MHCI expression might also drive the harmful synaptic pruning that follows injury to neural tissue after stroke or spinal cord damage.

Before birth, it might lead to imprecise synaptic pruning, leaving too many connections and setting the stage for autism or schizophrenia.

MRIs of some people with schizophrenia show that parts of their brain are smaller than normal, a feature associated with overactive synaptic pruning in adolescence.

In addition, it remains to be seen whether synaptic pruning could be a target for antipsychotic drugs, but «it's promising,» Sebat said.

What was particularly striking, Stevens notes, is that the researchers also found high expressions of C1q, a protein involved in normal synaptic pruning.

Although synaptic pruning is key to healthy early brain development, synaptic degradation in the adult brain may be a precursor of aging and neurodegenerative disease that results in neuronal loss.

Scientists refer to this process as synaptic pruning.

Recently, a research team led by Dr. Cynthia A. Lemere of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital utilized C3 - deficient mice, B6; 129S4 - C3tm1Crr / J (003641) to investigate whether the C3 - mediated synaptic pruning mechanisms at work in the developing brain also contribute to cognitive decline in the aging brain.

In addition to promoting the functional integrity of PV neurons, maturation of ECM may also play an instrumental role in the termination of developmental synaptic pruning; thus, ECM deficit can lead to excessive loss of synapses by prolonging the course of pruning.

The synaptic pruning that helps sculpt the adolescent brain into its adult form continues to weed out weak neural connections throughout our 20s.

Pasko Rakic at Yale University and colleagues at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, have now found that the brains of adults in their 20s are still subject to synaptic pruning.

«Numerous neurodevelopmental alterations are taking place during puberty, such as maturational processes in cortical and limbic regions, which are characterized by both progressive and regressive changes such as myelination and synaptic pruning,» said Schneider.

In particular, widespread «synaptic pruning» — a sort of scaling down of connectors between neurons — reshapes the brain as a child transitions to adulthood.

In January 2016, a landmark study in Nature from the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported that a set of genes associated with schizophrenia can contribute to synaptic pruning.

Giulio Tononi, head of the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, has found that gene expression inside synapses changes in a way that supports this hypothesis: Genes involved in synaptic growth are more active during the day, and those involved in synaptic pruning are more active during sleep.

After conducting studies in both humans and mice, the researchers said this new schizophrenia risk gene, called C4, appears to be involved in eliminating the connections between neurons — a process called «synaptic pruning,» which, in humans, happens naturally in the teen years.

A recent study linking schizophrenia and variations of the gene C4 also implicates the pathway involved in synaptic pruning.

Hence, understanding how synaptic pruning occurs may shed light on neurodevelopmental disorders and on neurodegenerative diseases in which a synaptic pruning gone awry may contribute to pathological synapse loss.»

Synapse elimination, or «synaptic pruning,» is a normal process that occurs during development — and one that Stevens has been fascinated by for years.

The researchers, chiefly from the Broad Institute, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, found that a person's risk of schizophrenia is dramatically increased if they inherit variants of a gene important to «synaptic pruning» — the healthy reduction during adolescence of brain cell connections that are no longer needed.

Synaptic pruning and other changes that occur in the adolescent brain give teenagers the tools to start making decisions on their own — even if they're bad decisions, says Luna.

synaptic pruning The reduction in the number of neurons and synapses that begins in infancy and is mostly complete by early adulthood.