Association between enlarged perivascular spaces and cerebrospinal fluid aquaporin-4 and tau levels: report from a memory clinic – AQP “over-expresses” in response to misfolds/gunk in an attempt to clear it. Makes sense.
Control of blood capillary networks and holes in blood-brain barrier models by regulating elastic modulus of scaffolds – It’s just physics baby.
Hypothalamic astrocytic-BMAL1 regulates energy homeostasis in a sex-dependent manner – BMAL1, more famous as the zeitgeber clock setter in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Are most “sleep disorders” energy homeostasis issues?
Neurodevelopmental risk and adaptation as a model for comorbidity among internalizing and externalizing disorders: genomics and cell-specific expression enriched morphometric study – Fundamentally flawed garbage that could have been so much better without the psychiatric baggage. I’m including it because internalizing/externalizing is an important concept in the context of dorsal/ventral processing. Had the research not been designed to find exactly what the hypothesis proposed, they would have found that “externalizers” have on average greater CT than “normal” (and perhaps lower cerebellar CT). Starting any data pool based on psychiatric descriptions by definition limits their pool to only individuals with “deficits”.
Depression, anxiety, and the risk of cancer: An individual participant data meta-analysis – Speaking of which… last decade there was quite a bit of work which desperately attempted to to associate psychiatric descriptions with all kinds of nasty health outcomes, including increased cancer risk. (Un?)Fortunately, the association between negative health outcomes and psychiatric conditions is largely a product of bias rather than physiology. The environmental conditions which may trigger these outcomes also significantly trigger those psychiatric description, if you live in a place with lead lined pipes, the environment is probably pretty shitty outside of those pipes.
Peripheral Blood S100B Levels in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis – Normally wouldn’t include this because of the age, but this line was pretty funny: “In addition, ASD is correlated with mental diseases such as anxiety and schizophrenia but is not correlated with medical diseases such as allergies and asthma.” Mental and Medical are two totally different types of disease with the same definition?
Circulating S100B levels at birth and risk of six major neuropsychiatric or neurological disorders: a two-sample Mendelian Randomization Study – Heh, I know the lede says only MDD at birth or Borderline in old people, but the data says “autism” (or as the study calls it, “autism spectral disorder”).
Lactate from astrocytes fuels learning-induced mRNA translation in excitatory and inhibitory neurons – Lactate in the membrane… Same vein as the current model explanation for the mechanics of stimulation.
Fatty acid oxidation organizes mitochondrial supercomplexes to sustain astrocytic ROS and cognition – Questions regarding the effectiveness of exercise and in particular anaerobic vs. aerobic exercise is driven by the metabolic flexibility of astrocytes utilizing different energy substrates.
Stress gates an astrocytic energy reservoir to impair synaptic plasticity – Depression and Anxiety are the same response to stress, expressed along opposing paths.
Astrocytic mitochondrial ROS modulate brain metabolism and mouse behaviour – The mystical magical mind machine, mitochondria.
Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing in Astrocyte Development, Heterogeneity, and Disease
Behavioral genetics of temporal framing: Heritability of time perspective and its common genetic bases with major personality traits – I feel like this one is personal considering I’ve been arguing that time is an artificial construct based on differences in sensory information. Recent work strongly suggests trait preferences can be shaped by populations over generational time spans, and that behavioral trait preferences can be passed the same. Work like this continues down the path of tying expressed behavior to RNA biomarkers.
What do we know about astrocytes and the antidepressant effects of DBS? – Man, these guys are mag dumping. From putting supporting in context quotes with regard to astrocyte function to the general overall tone of “do neurons actually have anything to do with depression at all?” are some of the strongest ideological shots I’ve seen published so far.
Investigating the ability of astrocytes to drive neural network synchrony (Pre-Print) – Question: How do neurons create network synchrony? Answer: They don’t, glia do.
Cortical astrocytes modulate dominance behavior in male mice by regulating synaptic excitatory and inhibitory balance – Taken with enough salt to make the Dead Sea feel like Tahoe, it’s more work suggesting behavior is an agglomeration and is modifiable by manipulating “checkpoints”.
Optical control of ultrafast structural dynamics in a fluorescent protein – Mmmph. I’m not aroused by this at all. Work like this provides a pathway to a really exciting convergence between the work of projects like AlphaFold and the core chemistry/physics substrate of “life”. Now we can study the actual folding and have a framework to test predictions outside of the original scope, a rare bit of potential consilience in highly technical fields. It’s really fascinating how well these two can inform each other.
Molecular heterogeneity of C. elegans glia across sexes – WOW. Just a lot in this one. Vesicle function as an artifact of healthy processing, could be an “aging as loss of epigenetic response” response if vesicle degradation results in reduced ability to transmit peptide/protein products in response to environmental changes.
A general concept of quantitative abiotic stress sensing – Interesting idea, stimuli response requires two components, “trigger” which detects the stimuli itself and a “response” level which determines how “strong” the stimuli is. Imagine “salience” as the trigger and “valence” as the mechanisms which shape the strength of the triggered processes.