The complement system, a central component of innate immunity, exerts a dual influence on cerebral ischaemia, driving both acute tissue injury and later reparative processes. Following arterial ...

In the last five years, neuronal pentraxins have emerged as potential markers of synaptic loss. In the case of NPTX2, researchers may now be able to explain why. In the March 29 Science Translational ...

Synaptic pruning is the process in which the brain removes neurons and synapses that it does not need. This usually takes place when a person is 2–10 years old. The brain contains millions of neurons ...

In the Alzheimer’s disease brain, synaptic loss correlates with cognitive decline, and is considered a sign of disease progression. But is synaptic loss always bad? Provocative new data from several ...

Researchers led by a group at the Institute of Brain Science, Nagoya City University Graduate School of Medical Sciences and the Nagoya City University School of Medicine report that they have shed ...

Researchers have shown in mice how immune cells in the brain target and remove unused connections between brain cells during normal development. This research, supported by the National Institutes of ...

A multidisciplinary team of scientists has discovered the mechanism that controls synaptic pruning of new neurons in the adult brain. The team discovered that microglial cells control the number of ...

A landmark study, based on genetic analysis of nearly 65,000 people, has revealed that a person's risk of schizophrenia is increased if they inherit specific variants in a gene related to "synaptic ...

Researchers from Kyushu University discovered a previously unrecognized synaptic "hotspot" that forms during adolescence, challenging the long-held view that adolescent brain development was dominated ...

Scientists have discovered that the adolescent brain does more than prune old connections. During the teen years, it actively builds dense new clusters of synapses in specific parts of neurons. These ...