(Nanowerk News) Synapses are the contacts between nerve cells that allow the flow of information that makes our brains work. However, the molecular architecture of these highly complex structures has ...

A new way to study the role of a critical neurotransmitter in disorders such as epilepsy, anxiety, insomnia, depression, schizophrenia, and alcohol addiction has been developed by a group of ...

Important new light has been shed on how neurons in the developing brain make connections with one another. This activity, called synapse validation, is at the heart of the process by which neural ...

Scientists have developed a computer-based model that may explain how nerve cells become damaged in ALS, and how best to time ...

Researchers have found, for the first time, that a blood-clotting protein can, unexpectedly, degrade nerves--and how nerve-supporting glial cells, including Schwann cells, provide protection. The ...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, causes lethal respiratory paralysis within several years of diagnosis. There are no effective treatments to slow or halt this ...

How do we think, feel, remember, or move? These processes involve synaptic transmission, in which chemical signals are transmitted between nerve cells using molecular containers called vesicles. Now, ...

A new study out today in the journal Science turns two decades of understanding about how brain cells communicate on its head. The study demonstrates that the tripartite synapse – a model long ...

Parkinson’s disease patients have not benefited from any new type of standard treatment in decades. Even so, there have been important discoveries about the disease that may lead to whole new ...

A genetic analysis of synapse formation changes the current understanding of the events that generate acetylcholine receptor clustering and synapse-specific receptor transcription. The clustering of ...

The neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is one of the best models to study the induction, assembly, maturation and maintenance of a postsynaptic apparatus. The three most widely appreciated experimental ...