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Gap junctions in the brain

Most connections between neurons are chemical synapses, but there are also gap junctions in the brain. Gap junctions between neurons have been particularly well studied for inhibitory interneurons. For...

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Vesicular monoamine transporter

The previous blog post mentioned the idea that dopamine (DA) can regulate the extent of gap junction coupling between neurons. In Parkinson disease there is loss of dopamine-producing neurons...

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Striatal direct and indirect pathways

This blog post is about the idea that there are two populations of neurons in the striatum that have essentially opposite effects on the control of movement. Set science free. There is a trend towards...

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Pain sensation and sodium channels

  Panamanian golden frog This blog post is on the trail of potential new treatments for chronic pain conditions. NaV1.8 is one of the types of voltage-gated sodium channels present in pain sensory...

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Entry into the age of genes

This blog post is about trying to understand what goes wrong in Alzheimer disease. I want to start the story 100 years ago… In 1911 Thomas Morgan began the task of locating genes along the length of...

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How many types of photoreceptor cells do we have?

Before this century, the answer was 2: rods and cones (see this textbook). However, there was good evidence that rods and cones could not account for all responses to light in mammals (1). In 2000, it...

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Tissue factor

tissue factor Tissue factor, also known as blood coagulation factor III, is a transmembrane protein  that is important for blood clotting (1). Tissue factor can bind coagulation factor VII, resulting...

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Inability to experience pain

Voltage-gated sodium channels produce action potentials that carry pain sensation into the central nervous system. Here is an article about a family with members who exhibit a congenital inability to...

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Fine-tuning optogenetics

How can we know the functional roles of particular populations of neurons in the brain? Optogenetics is the 2010 “Method of the Year” selection at Nature Methods. One use of optogenetics is to...

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Platelet activation

A previous blog post concerned the protein tissue factor and how rupture of blood vessel walls initiates fibrin clot formation. Platelets are cell fragments in the blood that normally lead a solitary...

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Confidence intervals

Confidence intervals are often used in biomedical research as a tool for describing the statistical significance of findings in a research study. An example of  such a study is “Examining the...

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Team-Based Learning

The Conference on Team-Based Learning in Higher Education was held March 2-4, 2011. On Tuesday there was an introductory session about the fundamentals of what constitutes a Team-Based Learning (TBL)...

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Journal Club

I’m trying to establish a more formal system for a “journal club”, but for now we can use this blog. This blog post starts the ”journal club”. ”Journal club” means that participants will each pick a...

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Functions of dopamine in the basal ganglia

Parkinson disease can be caused by loss of dapaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. There are two major populations of neurons in the striatum that respond to dopamine. Their roles in movement...

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Medical Student Bridge Program

I had a chance to observe the University of Arizona Medical Student Bridge Program. We would like to start a similar program at SCNM in order to help “nontraditional” medical students get ready for...

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Prezi presentation software

Is Prezi more useful than PowerPoint? Testing Prezi on Prezi

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ProfCast

I finally used ProfCast software to add audio tracks to PowerPoint presentations. ProfCast recording interface This image (to the right) shows the ProfCast interface after drag/drop of the “Diffusion...

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Regulation of Monoamine Oxidase in Parkinson Disease

In an earlier blog post I linked to an article about the potential role of dopamine metabolism and oxidative stress in Parkinson disease. Now the research group of Jian Feng reports that the protein...

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