Schizophrenia is a chronic debilitating disorder which affects more than two million Americans, and millions more worldwide. While significant progress has been made in understanding the disease and developing treatments, there remains a significant unmet medical need. More than 50% of patients switch their medication in a given year due to either poor response or the experience of adverse events.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory researchers have flipped the script on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) genetics.
A major challenge in human genetics is understanding which parts of the genome drive specific traits or contribute to disease risk. This challenge is even greater for genetic variants found in the 98% of the genome that does not encode proteins.
For the first time, a global study group headed by investigators at Virginia Commonwealth University has found markers that might point out early if a person is susceptible to schizophrenia in the early stage itself.
Hundreds of scientific studies have been conducted over the years to find the genes underlying common human traits, from eye color to intelligence and physical and mental illnesses.
Why is it that certain mammals have an exceptional sense of smell, some hibernate, and yet others, including humans, are predisposed to disease?
Researchers uncovered a stress-regulated gene that is important in the relationship between chronic stress and typical depressed behavior in mice.
Researchers have identified two previously unknown genes linked to schizophrenia and newly implicated a third gene as carrying risk for both schizophrenia and autism. Led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the multi-center study further demonstrated that the schizophrenia risk conferred by these rare damaging variants is conserved across ethnicities. The study may also point to new therapeutics.
The accumulation of amyloid beta proteins, which encourage synaptic malfunction, causes cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), according to scientific evidence.
The Lieber Institute for Brain Development has received a $1 million, two-year grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support the work of the African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative (AANRI) to promote racial equity throughout the field of neuroscience.
In order to more fully understand how diseases arise in the brain, scientists must unravel the intricate way neurons relay messages (either chemical or electrical) along a complex web of nerve cells. One way is by using a tool called DREADDs, which stands for Designer Receptors Activated by Designer Drugs.
Individuals with cocaine use disorder exhibit gene expression changes in two brain regions: the nucleus accumbens, a region associated with reward, and the caudate nucleus, a region mediating habit formation, according to research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published February 10 in Science Advances.
Why are some people diagnosed with ADHD while others are not? And when is the seed of ADHD sown, in life or the womb?
An article published today in the journal Science indicates that a substantial proportion of Americans are willing to use an essentially unregulated reproductive genetic technology to increase the chances of having a baby who is someday admitted to a top-100 ranked college.
The first proof of 12-hour cycles of gene activity in the human brain is presented by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the United States.
Twenty years ago, following the initial sequencing of the human genome, geneticists started carrying out extensive genome-wide association studies to find genomic regions connected to human disease.
Each human cell is distinct because it is written in the DNA language.
A team of Duke researchers has identified a group of human DNA sequences driving changes in brain development, digestion and immunity that seem to have evolved rapidly after our family line split from that of the chimpanzees, but before we split with the Neanderthals.
Researchers investigating the fundamental brain mechanics of autism spectrum disorder have discovered that a gene mutation known to be connected with the illness causes considerably more overstimulation of brain cells than in neuronal cells without the mutation.
Not just three, but even five proteins share important roles in the formation and function of synapses and can substitute for each other. This discovery was made by a team of the research focus "Mental Health & Neuroscience" of the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences Krems (KL Krems) and the CavX PhD program of the Medical University of Innsbruck.
Researchers have opened a new avenue for investigations of neurological development, disease, and therapies that cannot be undertaken in living people by employing stem cells to grow small brain-like structures in the lab.