Newborns with heart complications can rely on their newly developed immune systems to regenerate cardiac tissues, but adults aren't so lucky. After a heart attack, most adults struggle to regenerate healthy heart tissue, leading to scar-tissue buildup and, often, heart failure. A new study in experimental animals reveals a critical difference in how macrophages -- a part of the immune system -- help repair the heart in newborns versus adults after a heart attack. The study highlights a fundamental difference in how the immune system drives healing based on age.
Read more …Born to heal: Why babies recover, but adults scar, after heart damage
A new study has discovered in mouse models that genes associated with repairing mismatched DNA are critical in eliciting damages to neurons that are most vulnerable in Huntington's disease and triggering downstream pathologies and motor impairment, shedding light on disease mechanisms and potential new ways to develop therapies.
Read more …Mystery solved: New study reveals how DNA repair genes play a major role in Huntington's disease
Scientists have developed an innovative method for growing brain tumors of individual patients in the laboratory that mimic the original structure and the molecular property of the parental tumor as closely as possible. Drug tests in this model were found to correlate very well with actual patient responses, making it a valuable method for investigating therapies.
Read more …New perspectives for personalized therapy of brain tumors
The pleasurable urge to move to music -- to groove -- appears to be a physiological response independent of how much we generally enjoy music, according to a new article. That groove response is so strong it is even found in people with musical anhedonia, those who take little or no pleasure from music. Researchers compared groove responses to more than 50 short pieces of music in people with musical anhedonia and non-anhedonic controls and found that for people with anhedonia, the urge to move appears to drive their experience of pleasure. That suggests that the blunted pleasure sensation found in people with musical anhedonia is compensated by the urge to move.
Read more …Music makes us move even when we don't like it