Latest Midbrain Stories

Emotional balance is regulated by molecular factors behind stress response When healthy people are faced with threatening situations, they react with a suitable behavioral response and do not descend into a state of either panic or indifference, as is the case, for example, with patients who suffer from anxiety. With the help of genetic studies on mice, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry have discovered two opposing neuronal regulatory circuits for the generation and...

Memory-like effects in brain reward pathway could contribute to drug addictionThe effects of nicotine upon brain regions involved in addiction mirror those of cocaine, according to new neuroscience research.A single 15-minute exposure to nicotine caused a long-term increase in the excitability of neurons involved in reward, according to a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience. The results suggest that nicotine and cocaine hijack similar mechanisms of memory on first contact to create...

The lateral habenula is hyperactive in rat models of human depressionA team of neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and UC San Diego (UCSD) has collected evidence suggesting that a previously overlooked portion of the brain could be a prime locus of human depression.In two rat models of human depression, the scientists have demonstrated that neurons in a tiny area in the central brain called the lateral habenula (LHb) are...

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Ceregene, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, reported today that its scientists and collaborators have published new experimental findings in support of its Parkinson's disease program which appeared as the lead article in the current issue of Movement Disorders (the official journal of the Movement Disorders Society). The publication reports the first evidence that gene transfer can provide targeted expression of a neurotrophic factor, i.e.,...

Investigators Build a Case Linking Chemical DOPAL to IllnessIn new research from Saint Louis University, investigators have found evidence that a toxin produced by the brain is responsible for the series of cellular events that lead to Parkinson's disease. The study, published in PLoS One, found that the brain toxin DOPAL plays a key role in killing the dopamine neurons which trigger the illness.In earlier research, Saint Louis University investigators found that DOPAL seemed to be...

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Ceregene, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it is progressing with enrollment and dosing in its CERE-120 (AAV2-neurturin) Phase 2b multi-center, sham-surgery, double-blinded controlled trial in Parkinson's disease. This trial was initiated in October 2010 and all 11 centers across the United States are now actively enrolling patients. These sites are among the best movement disorders centers in the country and include Baylor...

Exhausted neurons die prematurely and trigger disease symptomsWe all know that living a stressful lifestyle can take its toll, making us age faster and making us more susceptible to the cold going around the office.The same appears to be true of neurons in the brain. According to a new Northwestern Medicine study published Nov. 10 in the journal Nature, dopamine-releasing neurons in a region of the brain called the substantia nigra lead a lifestyle that requires lots of energy, creating...

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Ceregene, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, announced today that enrollment has begun in a new double-blind sham surgery-controlled Phase 2b study evaluating CERE-120 in Parkinson's disease patients. CERE-120 is a gene therapy product that delivers the neurotrophic factor neurturin to degenerating or dying dopamine neurons. Data from the first Phase 2 clinical trial of CERE-120 are being published later this year in Lancet Neurology (to appear online...

Rui Costa, Principal Investigator of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (Portugal), and Xin Jin, of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health (USA), describe in the latest issue of the journal Nature(*), that the activity of certain neurons in the brain can signal the initiation and termination of behavioural sequences we learn anew. Furthermore, they found that this brain activity is essential for...

SAN DIEGO, April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Ceregene, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, announced today that enrollment is proceeding in a new Phase 1/2 clinical study evaluating CERE-120, a gene therapy product which delivers the neurotrophic factor neurturin, to dying neurons in Parkinson's disease patients. This new clinical study follows a completed Phase 2 trial and builds on experience gained in that trial, by enhancing the dosing regimen and optimizing the duration of patient follow up....