New Brain Imaging Breakthrough Reveals Clues to Parkinson’s | WDC TV News
Editor's note: A collaboration between MBL Neurobiology faculty Shigeki Watanabe and Whitman Scientist Kristina Lippmann underlies this study. Watanabe says: "We started looking at resected brain tissues from human patients and showed that 1) we can study synaptic functions in these tissues using the [imaging] techniques Erik Jorgensen and I developed in MBL and 2) the mechanisms we originally described for C. elegans and mouse are conserved in human, validating the use of model systems in research."
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that they have successfully used a “zap-and-freeze” method to capture rapid communication between brain cells in living tissue from both mice and humans. The approach allowed them to observe interactions that normally happen too quickly to track.
According to the team, the findings, published Nov. 24 in Neuron and supported by the National Institutes of Health, may help uncover the underlying biological causes of nonheritable forms of Parkinson’s disease.
Sporadic Parkinson’s cases represent the majority of diagnoses, the Parkinson’s Foundation notes. These cases involve disruptions in the synapse, the tiny site where one neuron passes a signal to another. Because this junction is so small and its activity unfolds rapidly, it has long been challenging to study in detail, says Shigeki Watanabe, Ph.D., an associate professor of cell biology at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the senior author of the study.
“We hope this new technique of visualizing synaptic membrane dynamics in live brain tissue samples can help us understand similarities and differences in nonheritable and heritable forms of the condition,” Watanabe says. He adds that the technique could eventually guide the development of therapies for this neurodegenerative disorder. Read rest of the article here.
Source: New Brain Imaging Breakthrough Reveals Clues to Parkinson’s | WDC TV News