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News Beck 10.2019
An interneuron (bright, with long appendages) from the hippocampus of the rat. The finely branched axon (top left cloud) surrounds the cell bodies of pyramidal cells and can inhibit these effectively.
© Leonie Pothmann/Uni Bonn

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Epilepsy: Function of "brake cells" disrupted

In some forms of epilepsy, the function of certain "brake cells" in the brain is presumed to be disrupted. This may be one of the reasons why the electrical malfunction is able to spread from the point of origin across large parts of the brain. A current study by the University of Bonn with members of the cluster of excellence ImmunoSensation2, in which researchers from Lisbon were also involved, points in this direction. The results are published in the renowned "Journal of Neuroscience".

Publication

Leonie Pothmann, Christian Klos, Oliver Braganza, Sarah Schmidt, Oihane Horno, Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer and Heinz Beck: Altered dynamics of canonical feed-back inhibition predicts increased burst transmission in chronic epilepsy; The Journal Of Neuroscience; https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2594-18.2019

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New Findings on Immunotherapy for a Rare Brain Infection

Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is a rare but very serious brain disease. It is caused by the reactivation of the widespread JC virus when the immune system is severely weakened. There is currently no targeted antiviral therapy available, which is why new treatment approaches are urgently needed. In recent years, so-called immune checkpoint inhibitors have been increasingly used; these “unlock” the immune system and reactivate the body’s own immune cells. The results were recently published in the journal JAMA Neurology.
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Die künstlerische Abbildung zeigt Seeigel der Art Arbacia punctulata, die Spermien (weiße Wolke) und Eier (orangefarbene Wolke) ins Wasser abgeben. Von den Eiern freigesetzte Pheromone steuern die Synchronität des Laichens.

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What Makes Sea Urchin and Salmon Sperm Swim

A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences and the University of Bonn shows that pH plays a crucial role in sperm motility in sea urchins and salmon. A rise in pH activates the enzyme soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC), which produces the messenger molecule cAMP and thereby regulates sperm movement. This mechanism may be widespread in many marine invertebrates and fish. The findings have now been published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Immune cells remember their location

A new AI-based method reconstructs spatial information about where immune cells were originally located in an organ, even after these cells have been removed from the tissue and analyzed individually. To accomplish this, Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn use the transcriptome, i.e., the entirety of all messenger RNA transcripts produced by genes within a cell at a given time. The work has now been published in the journal Advanced Science and introduces the new MERLIN algorithm.
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