Roles of brain protein

A protein called AKT, is ubiquitous in brain tissue and instrumental in enabling the brain to adapt to new experiences and lay down new memories. AKT comes in three distinct varieties residing in different kinds of brain cells and affecting brain health in very distinct ways. It is a central protein that has been implicated in a bevy of neurological diseases.

Discovered in the 1970s and known best as an "oncogene" (one that, when mutated, can promote cancer), AKT has more recently been identified as a key player in promoting "synaptic plasticity," the brain's ability to strengthen cellular connections in response to experience. AKT is one of the first proteins to come up after observing scary objects, it is a central switch that turns on the memory factory.

For the study, Hoeffer's team silenced the three different isoforms, or varieties, of AKT in mice and observed their brain activity. They made a number of key discoveries: AKT2 is found exclusively in astroglia, the supportive, star-shaped cells in the brain and spinal cord that are often impacted in brain cancer and brain injury.

 AKT1 is ubiquitous in neurons and appears to be the most important form in promoting the strengthening of synapses in response to experience-memory formation. (This finding is in line with previous research showing that mutations in AKT1 boost risk of schizophrenia and other brain disorders associated with a flaw in the way a patient perceives or remembers experiences.)
AKT3 appears to play a key role in brain growth, with mice whose AKT3 gene is silenced showing smaller brain size.
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Schizophrenia disrupts the brain's communication system

Schizophrenia disorder is a systemic disruption to the brain's communication system. The white matter- fatty brain tissue enabling neurons to talk to each other. The study displaces a theory that schizophrenia manifests due to wiring problems in only the prefrontal and temporal lobes. These front-facing areas of the brain are responsible for personality, decision-making and hearing perception.

Schizophrenia is a disorder where white matter wiring is frayed throughout the brain, researchers found that frayed communication cords were present throughout the brains of people with schizophrenia, the poorly insulated wiring was most evident in the corpus callosum, which allows for communication between the brain hemispheres and in the frontal portion of the corona radiata, a key structure for information processing.

Schizophrenia has a biological effect on the entire brain. Current medical treatment for schizophrenia addresses only symptoms because the causes of the disease are still unknown. Many patients are asked to take antipsychotic drugs for the rest of their lives. Some individuals experience side effects such as significant weight gain, tremors, emotional numbing or extreme drowsiness.

Researchers analyzed the data people with schizophrenia and healthy people from Australia, Asia, Europe, South Africa and North America. The researchers examined data from diffusion tensor imaging, a form of MRI that measures the movement of water molecules in the white matter of the brain. These scans allow scientists to locate problem areas in the brain's normally insulated communication system. Schizophrenia is partly hereditary, so perhaps specific genes promote the disorder through slight alterations in brain wiring.
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Cannabis reverses aging brain

Memory performance decreases with increasing age. Cannabis can reverse these ageing processes in the brain. This was shown in mice by scientists at the University of Bonn with their colleagues at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel).

Old animals were able to regress to the state of two-month-old mice with a prolonged low-dose treatment with a cannabis active ingredient. This opens up new options, for instance, when it comes to treating dementia.

Cognitive ability also decreases with increasing age. This can be noticed, for instance, it becomes more difficult to learn new things or devote attention to several things at the same time and this can leads to dementia.

Researchers have long been looking for ways to slow down or even reverse this process. Scientists at the University of Bonn and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) have now achieved this in mice. These animals have a relatively short life expectancy in nature and display pronounced cognitive deficits even at twelve months of age.

The researchers administered a small quantity of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, to mice aged two, twelve and 18 months for four weeks.

Afterwards, they tested learning capacity and memory performance in the animals -- orientation skills and the recognition of other mice. Mice who were only given a placebo displayed natural age-dependent learning had memory losses.

In contrast, the cognitive functions of the animals treated with cannabis were just as good as the two-month-old control animals. The treatment completely reversed the loss of performance in the old animals.

Scientists discovered that the brain ages much faster when mice do not possess any functional receptors for THC. These cannabinoid 1 (CB1) receptors are proteins to which the substances dock and thus trigger a signal chain. CB1 is also the reason for the intoxicating effect of THC in cannabis products, such as hashish or marijuana, which accumulate at the receptor.

THC imitates the effect of cannabinoids produced naturally in the body, which fulfil important functions in the brain. With increasing age, the quantity of the cannabinoids naturally formed in the brain reduces.

When the activity of the cannabinoid system declines, we find rapid ageing in the brain. To discover precisely what effect the THC treatment has in old mice, the researchers examined the brain tissue and gene activity of the treated mice.

The molecular signature no longer corresponded to that of old animals, but similar to that of young animals. The number of links between the nerve cells in the brain also increased again, which is an important for learning ability.

A low dose of the administered THC was chosen so that there was no intoxicating effect in the mice. Cannabis products are already permitted as medications, for instance as pain relief. As a next step, the researchers want to conduct a clinical trial to investigate whether THC also reverses ageing processes in human brain and can increase cognitive ability.