stem cell therapy can be useful for spinal cord injury (sci). induced pluripotent stem cells (ipscs) are generated by reprogramming mature, fully differentiated cells into a pluripotent state. the ability to generate pluripotent cells from adult somatic cells without the need for an embryo was a major development in stem cell biology. ipscs were established from mouse fibroblasts and demonstrat...

The relationship between synaptic or injecting input level and firing rate is an important metric to characterize neuron input-output dynamics. In this study, we examine two long-held, but never validated, assumptions in the "algebraic summation of afterhyperpolarization" theory, which explains how firing rate varies with input (typically referred to as input current-frequency modulation or "F-...

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (als), the most common form of motor neuron disease, is a progressive and devastating disease involving both lower and upper motor neurons, typically following a relentless progression towards death. therefore, all efforts must be made by the clinician to exclude alternative and more treatable entities. als with laboratory abnormalities of uncertain significance is...

Neurons can have widely differing intrinsic membrane properties, in particular the density of specific conductances, but how these contribute to characteristic neuronal activity or pattern formation is not well understood. To explore the relationship between conductances, and in particular how they influence the activity of motor neurons in the well characterized leech heartbeat system, we deve...

by over fivefold (figure), and the rises were larger in middle and older age than in children and young adults.3 This discrepancy therefore indicates that the rises in asthma mortality cannot simply be related to increased incidence or prevalence of severe asthma requiring hospital admission. Assuming that data on asthma mortality are satisfactorily reliable, and that the determinants of hospit...

Many countries are still grappling with the issue of therapeutic cloning of human cells as the UN tackles this issue alongside reproductive cloning, but in the UK a new programme looking at the causes of motor neuron disease has recently been sanctioned. Michael Gross reports.

Synchronized discharge of individual motor units is commonly observed in the muscles of human subjects performing voluntary contractions. The amount of this synchronization is thought to reflect the extent to which motoneurons in the same and related pools share common synaptic input. However, the relationship between the proportion of shared synaptic input and the strength of synchronization h...

The generation of mice lacking SCYL1 or SCYL2 and the identification of Scyl1 as the causative gene in the motor neuron disease mouse model muscle deficient (Scyl1(mdf/mdf) ) demonstrated the importance of the SCY1-like family of protein pseudokinases in neuronal function and survival. Several essential cellular processes such as intracellular trafficking and nuclear tRNA export are thought to ...

BACKGROUND Observing competitive games such as sports is a pervasive entertainment among humans. The inclination to watch others play may be based on our social-cognitive ability to understand the internal states of others. The mirror neuron system, which is activated when a subject observes the actions of others, as well as when they perform the same action themselves, seems to play a crucial ...