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Martha Constantine-Paton is a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
Prior to joining MIT in 1999 she held faculty appointments at Yale and Princeton. She is an expert on synaptic plasticity and brain development, particularly visual development. She is known for her studies on three-eyed frogs, a demonstration of neural plasticity in which a third eye grafted into a developing tadpole produces a pattern of overlapping connections that resemble mammalian ocular dominance columns. [1] Using this system, she and her colleagues demonstrated the importance of NMDA receptors in development plasticity. [2]
She currently studies the molecular mechanisms that underlie the brain's response to visual experience. Her work is also relevant to understanding the mechanisms of schizophrenia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). [3]
She is married to Nobel laureate H. Robert Horvitz.[ citation needed ]
In excitotoxicity, nerve cells suffer damage or death when the levels of otherwise necessary and safe neurotransmitters such as glutamate become pathologically high, resulting in excessive stimulation of receptors. For example, when glutamate receptors such as the NMDA receptor or AMPA receptor encounter excessive levels of the excitatory neurotransmitter, glutamate, significant neuronal damage might ensue. Excess glutamate allows high levels of calcium ions (Ca2+) to enter the cell. Ca2+ influx into cells activates a number of enzymes, including phospholipases, endonucleases, and proteases such as calpain. These enzymes go on to damage cell structures such as components of the cytoskeleton, membrane, and DNA. In evolved, complex adaptive systems such as biological life it must be understood that mechanisms are rarely, if ever, simplistically direct. For example, NMDA in subtoxic amounts induces neuronal survival of otherwise toxic levels of glutamate.
Riluzole is a medication used to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other motor neuron diseases. Riluzole delays the onset of ventilator-dependence or tracheostomy in some people and may increase survival by two to three months. Riluzole is available in tablet and liquid form.
Glutamate receptors are synaptic and non synaptic receptors located primarily on the membranes of neuronal and glial cells. Glutamate is abundant in the human body, but particularly in the nervous system and especially prominent in the human brain where it is the body's most prominent neurotransmitter, the brain's main excitatory neurotransmitter, and also the precursor for GABA, the brain's main inhibitory neurotransmitter. Glutamate receptors are responsible for the glutamate-mediated postsynaptic excitation of neural cells, and are important for neural communication, memory formation, learning, and regulation.
A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Such neuronal damage may ultimately involve cell death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple system atrophy, tauopathies, and prion diseases. Neurodegeneration can be found in the brain at many different levels of neuronal circuitry, ranging from molecular to systemic. Because there is no known way to reverse the progressive degeneration of neurons, these diseases are considered to be incurable; however research has shown that the two major contributing factors to neurodegeneration are oxidative stress and inflammation. Biomedical research has revealed many similarities between these diseases at the subcellular level, including atypical protein assemblies and induced cell death. These similarities suggest that therapeutic advances against one neurodegenerative disease might ameliorate other diseases as well.
Mriganka Sur is the Newton Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a Visiting Faculty Member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and N.R. Narayana Murthy Distinguished Chair in Computational Brain Research at the Centre for Computational Brain Research, IIT Madras. He was on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2010 and has been serving as Jury Chair from 2018.
β-Methylamino-L-alanine, or BMAA, is a non-proteinogenic amino acid produced by cyanobacteria. BMAA is a neurotoxin. Its potential role in various neurodegenerative disorders is the subject of scientific research.
Superoxide dismutase [Cu-Zn] also known as superoxide dismutase 1 or hSod1 is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the SOD1 gene, located on chromosome 21. SOD1 is one of three human superoxide dismutases. It is implicated in apoptosis, familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Parkinson's disease.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neurone disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a rare and terminal neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most common form of the motor neuron diseases. Early symptoms of ALS include stiff muscles, muscle twitches, gradual increasing weakness, and muscle wasting. Limb-onset ALS begins with weakness in the arms or legs, while bulbar-onset ALS begins with difficulty in speaking or swallowing. Around half of people with ALS develop at least mild difficulties with thinking and behavior, and about 15% develop frontotemporal dementia. Motor neuron loss continues until the abilities to eat, speak, move, or, lastly, breathe are lost.
Activity-dependent plasticity is a form of functional and structural neuroplasticity that arises from the use of cognitive functions and personal experience; hence, it is the biological basis for learning and the formation of new memories. Activity-dependent plasticity is a form of neuroplasticity that arises from intrinsic or endogenous activity, as opposed to forms of neuroplasticity that arise from extrinsic or exogenous factors, such as electrical brain stimulation- or drug-induced neuroplasticity. The brain's ability to remodel itself forms the basis of the brain's capacity to retain memories, improve motor function, and enhance comprehension and speech amongst other things. It is this trait to retain and form memories that is associated with neural plasticity and therefore many of the functions individuals perform on a daily basis. This plasticity occurs as a result of changes in gene expression which are triggered by signaling cascades that are activated by various signaling molecules during increased neuronal activity.
Richard Lewis Huganir is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences, Director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Brain Science Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has joint appointments in the Department of Biological Chemistry and the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
AM-1241 (1-(methylpiperidin-2-ylmethyl)-3-(2-iodo-5-nitrobenzoyl)indole) is a chemical from the aminoalkylindole family that acts as a potent and selective agonist for the cannabinoid receptor CB2, with a Ki of 3.4 nM at CB2 and 80 times selectivity over the related CB1 receptor. It has analgesic effects in animal studies, particularly against "atypical" pain such as hyperalgesia and allodynia. This is thought to be mediated through CB2-mediated peripheral release of endogenous opioid peptides, as well as direct activation of the TRPA1 channel. It has also shown efficacy in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in animal models.
Christine Elizabeth Holt FRS, FMedSci is a British developmental neuroscientist.
Many experiments have been done to find out how the brain interprets stimuli and how animals develop fear responses. The emotion, fear, has been hard-wired into almost every individual, due to its vital role in the survival of the individual. Researchers have found that fear is established unconsciously and that the amygdala is involved with fear conditioning.
Arnold Eskin was a professor of chronobiology at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. He attended Vanderbilt University, where he received a degree in physics. He later attended University of Texas at Austin, where he received his Ph.D. in zoology in 1969. He is recognized in the term Eskinogram, and has been a leader in the discovery of mechanisms underlying entrainment of circadian clocks.
Research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has focused on animal models of the disease, its mechanisms, ways to diagnose and track it, and treatments.
HollisT. Cline is an American neuroscientist and the Director of the Dorris Neuroscience Center at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Her research focuses on the impact of sensory experience on brain development and plasticity.
Malú G. Tansey is an American Physiologist and Neuroscientist as well as the Director of the Center for Translational Research in Neurodegenerative Disease at the University of Florida. Tansey holds the titles of Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Investigator and Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases Investigator. As the principal investigator of the Tansey Lab, Tansey guides a research program centered around investigating the role of neuroimmune interactions in the development and progression of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease. Tansey's work is primarily focused on exploring the cellular and molecular basis of peripheral and central inflammation in the pathology of age-related neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Merit Cudkowicz is an American neurologist and neuroscientist who studies amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Cudkowicz is Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, director of the ALS clinic and the Neurological Clinical Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and chair of the Department of Neurology at MGH. Cudkowicz has led several large-scale collaborations and clinical trials to test novel treatments for ALS and as of 2020, researching ways to detect early biomarkers of ALS to improve diagnosis.
Elizabeth Quinlan is an American neuroscientist and a professor at the University of Maryland. There she serves as the Clark Leadership Chair in Neuroscience and as the Director of the Brain and Behavior Institute (BBI). Her research focuses on understanding how the plasticity of juvenile and adult mammalian visual systems differ.
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