hippocampus
Mapping the Brain’s Memory Bank
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
There’s a lot of groundbreaking research now underway to map the organization and internal wiring of the brain’s hippocampus, essential for memory, emotion, and spatial processing. This colorful video depicting a mouse hippocampus offers a perfect case in point.
The video presents the most detailed 3D atlas of the hippocampus ever produced, highlighting its five previously defined zones: dentate gyrus, CA1, CA2, CA3, and subiculum. The various colors within those zones represent areas with newly discovered and distinctive patterns of gene expression, revealing previously hidden layers of structural organization.
For instance, the subiculum, which sends messages from the hippocampus to other parts of the brain, includes several subregions. The subregions include the three marked in red, yellow, and blue at about 23 seconds into the video.
How’d the researchers do it? In the new study, published in Nature Neuroscience, the researchers started with the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas, a rich, publicly accessible 3D atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain. The team, led by Hong-Wei Dong, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, drilled down into the data to pull up 258 genes that are differentially expressed in the hippocampus and might be helpful for mapping purposes.
Some of those 258 genes were generally expressed only in previously defined portions of the hippocampus. Others were “turned on” only in discrete portions of known hippocampal domains, leading the researchers to define 20 distinct subregions that hadn’t been recognized before.
Combining these data, sophisticated analytical tools, and plenty of hard work, the team assembled this detailed atlas, together with connectivity data, to create a detailed wiring diagram. It includes about 200 signaling pathways that show how all those subregions network together and with other portions of the brain.
What’s really interesting is that the data also showed that these components of the hippocampus contribute to three relatively independent brain-wide communication networks. While much more study is needed, those three networks appear to relate to distinct functions of the hippocampus, including spatial navigation, social behaviors, and metabolism.
This more-detailed view of the hippocampus is just the latest from the NIH-funded Mouse Connectome Project. The ongoing project aims to create a complete connectivity atlas for the entire mouse brain.
The Mouse Connectome Project isn’t just for those with an interest in mice. Indeed, because the mouse and human brain are similarly organized, studies in the smaller mouse brain can help to provide a template for making sense of the larger and more complex human brain, with its tens of billions of interconnected neurons.
Ultimately, the hope is that this understanding of healthy brain connections will provide clues for better treating the brain’s abnormal connections and/or disconnections. They are involved in numerous neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and autism spectrum disorder.
Reference:
[1] Integration of gene expression and brain-wide connectivity reveals the multiscale organization of mouse hippocampal networks. Bienkowski MS, Bowman I, Song MY, Gou L, Ard T, Cotter K, Zhu M, Benavidez NL, Yamashita S, Abu-Jaber J, Azam S, Lo D, Foster NN, Hintiryan H, Dong HW. Nat Neurosci. 2018 Nov;21(11):1628-1643.
Links:
Mouse Connectome Project (University of Southern California, Los Angeles)
Human Connectome Project (USC)
Allen Brain Map (Allen Institute, Seattle)
The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative (NIH)
NIH Support: National Institute of Mental Health; National Cancer Institute
Distinctive Brain ‘Subnetwork’ Tied to Feeling Blue
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: :iStock/kieferpix
Experiencing a range of emotions is a normal part of human life, but much remains to be discovered about the neuroscience of mood. In a step toward unraveling some of those biological mysteries, researchers recently identified a distinctive pattern of brain activity associated with worsening mood, particularly among people who tend to be anxious.
In the new study, researchers studied 21 people who were hospitalized as part of preparation for epilepsy surgery, and took continuous recordings of the brain’s electrical activity for seven to 10 days. During that same period, the volunteers also kept track of their moods. In 13 of the participants, low mood turned out to be associated with stronger activity in a “subnetwork” that involved crosstalk between the brain’s amygdala, which mediates fear and other emotions, and the hippocampus, which aids in memory.
Study Suggests Light Exercise Helps Memory
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit: iStock/Wavebreakmedia
How much exercise does it take to boost your memory skills? Possibly a lot less than you’d think, according to the results of a new study that examined the impact of light exercise on memory.
In their study of 36 healthy young adults, researchers found surprisingly immediate improvements in memory after just 10 minutes of low-intensity pedaling on a stationary bike [1]. Further testing by the international research team reported that the quick, light workout—which they liken in intensity to a short yoga or tai chi session—was associated with heightened activity in the brain’s hippocampus. That’s noteworthy because the hippocampus is known for its involvement in remembering facts and events.
Unlocking the Brain’s Memory Retrieval System
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Credit:Sahay Lab, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Play the first few bars of any widely known piece of music, be it The Star-Spangled Banner, Beethoven’s Fifth, or The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, and you’ll find that many folks can’t resist filling in the rest of the melody. That’s because the human brain thrives on completing familiar patterns. But, as we grow older, our pattern completion skills often become more error prone.
This image shows some of the neural wiring that controls pattern completion in the mammalian brain. Specifically, you’re looking at a cross-section of a mouse hippocampus that’s packed with dentate granule neurons and their signal-transmitting arms, called axons, (light green). Note how the axons’ short, finger-like projections, called filopodia (bright green), are interacting with a neuron (red) to form a “memory trace” network. Functioning much like an online search engine, memory traces use bits of incoming information, like the first few notes of a song, to locate and pull up more detailed information, like the complete song, from the brain’s repository of memories in the cerebral cortex.
New Evidence Suggests Aging Brains Continue to Make New Neurons
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
Caption: Mammalian hippocampal tissue. Immunofluorescence microscopy showing neurons (blue) interacting with neural astrocytes (red) and oligodendrocytes (green).
Credit: Jonathan Cohen, Fields Lab, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH
There’s been considerable debate about whether the human brain has the capacity to make new neurons into adulthood. Now, a recently published study offers some compelling new evidence that’s the case. In fact, the latest findings suggest that a healthy person in his or her seventies may have about as many young neurons in a portion of the brain essential for learning and memory as a teenager does.
As reported in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers examined the brains of healthy people, aged 14 to 79, and found similar numbers of young neurons throughout adulthood [1]. Those young neurons persisted in older brains that showed other signs of decline, including a reduced ability to produce new blood vessels and form new neural connections. The researchers also found a smaller reserve of quiescent, or inactive, neural stem cells in a brain area known to support cognitive-emotional resilience, the ability to cope with and bounce back from stressful circumstances.
While more study is clearly needed, the findings suggest healthy elderly people may have more cognitive reserve than is commonly believed. However, the findings may also help to explain why even perfectly healthy older people often find it difficult to face new challenges, such as travel or even shopping at a different grocery store, that wouldn’t have fazed them earlier in life.
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