Training in adolescence can offset cognitive deficits in adulthood in a proposed rat model of schizophrenia, reports a study in Neuron.
Read this story at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
animal behavior
How partners prevent addiction
Strong interpersonal relationships can help ward off addiction, and monogamous prairie voles offer clues as to why.
Read this article at Scientific American Mind.
Hyperactive clues to depression
A recent report in Nature links hyperactive synapses in the lateral habenula to learned helplessness in rats — a model for human depression. What’s more, applying deep brain stimulation, a protocol that alleviates depression in humans, to the lateral habenula also reduced learned helplessness in rats.
Read this article at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
Manipulating love and hate in the brain
According to a report in Nature, researchers have precisely identified and controlled neurons that mediate aggression in mice, even though the cells lie intermingled with neurons involved in other behaviors.
Read this article at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
A brain wrought without omega-3
A diet deficient in omega-3 fatty acids interferes with normal brain function, according to a report in Nature Neuroscience. Mice chronically deprived of these essential lipids not only showed abnormal brain signaling, but were also prone to anxious and depression-like behaviors.
Read this article at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
Epigenetic anointment
Though queen and worker honeybees are genetically identical, they lead starkly different lives. A report in PLoS Biology finds that chemical add-ons to DNA, called methyl groups, make the difference.
Read this article at The Economist.
Getting specific with a mouse model of schizophrenia
Removing a subset of NMDA receptors in mice early in development can disrupt neural circuits and behavior in ways that mirror schizophrenia.
Read this article at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
Holy chiroptera! Meet the local bats
Like the neighbors I rarely see until July, bats are making their appearances during the drawn-out summer evenings here in the Northwest.
Read this article at Crosscut.
Something to crow about
Noisy, plain, sulking on telephone lines, or loitering around trash cans, crows are unremarkable at best, and nuisances at worst. But when it comes to intelligence, these ordinary birds are exceptional.
Read this book review at Northwest Science and Technology.
