{"id":140464,"date":"2024-09-23T17:12:07","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T17:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/23\/a-cell-biologist-is-investigating-the-balance-of-brain-flexibility-stability\/"},"modified":"2024-09-23T17:12:07","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T17:12:07","slug":"a-cell-biologist-is-investigating-the-balance-of-brain-flexibility-stability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/23\/a-cell-biologist-is-investigating-the-balance-of-brain-flexibility-stability\/","title":{"rendered":"A cell biologist is investigating the balance of brain flexibility, stability"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div> \r\n<br><div style=\"clear:both\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.subscribe-cta {\n  color: black;\n  margin-top: 0px;\n  background-color: #EDD695;\n  background-size: cover;\n  padding: 20px;\n  border: 1px solid black;\n  border-top: 5px solid black;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n.centered {\n  text-align:center;\n  margin:auto;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n<!-- \/wp:html -->\n\n<!-- wp:group {\"className\":\"subscribe-cta\"} -->\n<div id=\"subscribeConversion\" class=\"wp-block-group subscribe-cta\"><!-- wp:heading {\"textAlign\":\"center\",\"style\":{\"typography\":{\"fontSize\":\"2em\"}}} -->\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:2em\">Extreme Climate Survey<\/h2>\n<!-- \/wp:heading -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph {\"align\":\"center\",\"style\":{\"typography\":{\"fontSize\":\"1.1em\"}}} -->\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:1.1em\"><strong><em>Science News <\/em>is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet&#8217;s changing climate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:1.1em\">What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events?<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:spacer {\"height\":\"20px\"} -->\n\n<!-- \/wp:spacer -->\n\n<!-- wp:buttons {\"className\":\"centered\",\"layout\":{\"type\":\"flex\",\"justifyContent\":\"center\"}} -->\n\n<!-- \/wp:buttons --><\/div>\n<!-- \/wp:group -->\n\n\n<p>Gomez\u2019s inquiries span from the tiny \u2014 for instance, minuscule conduits called synapses that sprout between nerve cells \u2014 to big shifts in behavior. This wide-ranging curiosity is one of her hallmarks as a scientist, says Peter Scheiffele, a neurobiologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland and her former postdoc adviser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He remembers when Gomez, who had been studying the brain, became fascinated by the gut. She began experimenting with the idea that molecular instructions could help pattern the gut the same way they pattern the brain, but the work was stopped by COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t see this as a story of a lack of success,\u201d Scheiffele says. \u201cI see it as the opposite \u2014 a story of genuine enthusiasm, motivation and, at some points, a certain randomness, but a creative randomness.\u201d It\u2019s a story of saying, \u201cHey, this is cool. I really want to poke at this and see if there is something exciting going on,\u2019\u201d Scheiffele says. \u201cThat to me is symbolic of how she often goes about science.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scheiffele says some scientists are linear thinkers who stick to a rigid plan. Gomez is more \u201cblue sky, go out there and challenge yourself, challenge a problem,\u201d he adds. She goes with optimism and says, \u201cLet\u2019s see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3143388\">In her lab, Andrea Gomez searches for signals that sculpt brain behavior.<\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3143388\">Brandon Sanchez Mejia, UC Berkeley<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>That \u201clet\u2019s see\u201d energy has taken Gomez through plenty of big changes in her research directions. As an undergraduate at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, she studied crustacean molting, among other things. Then, as a graduate student at New York University, she ultimately shifted to brains, studying the plasticity of nerve cell connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While working in Scheiffele\u2019s group as a postdoc, she and her colleagues made a surprising discovery about how certain synapses are built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The discovery hinged on a process known as \u201csplicing.\u201d Cellular machinery doesn\u2019t just copy information continuously and faithfully from DNA. These messages can get cut and recombined, or spliced, to form new versions of proteins. These spliced messages are \u201copportunities for something to be different,\u201d Gomez says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It turns out that, in the brains of mice at least, a version of a protein that results from a splicing event dramatically affects synapses of certain nerve cells. When that version of the protein was missing, these synapses weren\u2019t as responsive as they should be, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aaf2397\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mice flipped from being curious about new objects to avoiding them<\/a>, the researchers reported in 2016 in <em>Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results \u201cmade us and many people in the field begin to think very differently about what splicing in the nervous system does,\u201d says Scheiffele, a coauthor of the work. \u201cIt\u2019s not some kind of fine-tuning tweaking. It can be a fundamental switch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>These days, Gomez has a new focus. Instead of looking at how internal proteins enable change, she\u2019s begun a project on an intriguing external way to shift the brain \u2014 psychedelic drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Psychedelics are thought to open windows of plasticity in the brain in ways that scientists don\u2019t fully understand. One way this flexibility may emerge is through splicing, Gomez suspects. A single dose of psilocybin led to thousands of splicing events in mice\u2019s brains that didn\u2019t happen without the drug, Gomez and her colleagues have found in preliminary research. \u201cThis, to me, is such a rich repertoire to discover new mechanisms of plasticity,\u201d she says, \u201cand that\u2019s really my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Psychedelic drugs\u2019 effects on the brain are still, by and large, a mystery, says Gordon Fishell, a developmental neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute. \u201cAnything that so profoundly affects your sense of self, being, identity, consciousness is fundamental to how we think of how the brain functions,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other post-psychedelic changes abound: There are changes in gene activity and reduction of rigid structures around nerve cells that have been implicated in memory storage, called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/nets-full-holes-catch-long-term-memories\">perineuronal nets<\/a> (<em>SN: 10\/20\/15<\/em>). Some of the biggest changes happen in nerve cell activity in a part of the brain that handles perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gomez is from Las Cruces, N.M., and is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe. \u201cI heard about psychedelics before I started working on it, from Indigenous perspectives, all the way back to high school.\u201d Soon after she arrived at Berkeley and began setting up her new lab, a new colleague floated the idea of teaming up to study how psychedelics make the brain more flexible \u2014 another instance of Gomez being open to change, and saying, \u201cLet\u2019s see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/andrea-gomez-brain-flexibility-behavior\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Extreme Climate Survey Science News is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet&#8217;s changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? Gomez\u2019s inquiries span from the tiny \u2014 for instance, minuscule conduits called synapses that sprout between nerve cells \u2014 to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/sn10_andrea-gomez_inline.jpg?resize=677%2C450&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[9659,39072,1920,363,81758,2020,2954],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140466,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140464\/revisions\/140466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}