Complex Brain Connections Key To Finding Cure For Brain Diseases

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Complex brain connections have minute gaps in between them where chemical messages known as synapses are sent were found to have a large number of different proteins that act as indicators for certain conditions and diseases of the brain.

Complex brain connections are showing the answers

“It’s like these proteins were locked away in a safe for over 50 years, and we believe that our study has cracked open the safe,” says the study’s senior investigator Scott Soderling, an associate professor of cell biology and neurobiology at Duke University.

And the researchers are very excited about it.

The study was recently published in the journal Science, where researchers claim they have found 140 different proteins never before mapped to inhibitory synapses.

Proteins act as markers to indicate disorders

To name one example, Soderling said they found 27 of these proteins identified through genome-based studies with links to epilepsy, intellectual disability and autism, adding that these findings could further improve our understanding or even come up with treatments.

It is understood that drugs target synapses when treating brain diseases, but this is also affected by drug abuse and no less than 40 of these proteins are known to clump together on the inhibitory synapses that prevent overexcitement triggering brain seizures but also develop into brain signals.

“The inhibitory synapse is just as important as the excitatory synapse, but we didn’t have a good way of purifying the proteins that were there, so we didn’t understand how it worked,” Soderling said.

The tests were conducted on lab mice and were excited about the discovery of these proteins that “no one had ever seen before.”

“Finding them at the inhibitory synapse really gives us important insights,” Soderling said. “The hypothesis now is that these mutations are impairing the ability of neurons to inhibit activity. That’s something that we’re actively studying.”

Soderling adds that their findings may be a big help for brain disorder research and help science identify more ways to treat common brain-related diseases that affect millions of people worldwide.

The Society for Neuroscience reports that there are numerous brain –related diseases that millions continue to suffer without the benefit of getting treatment due to the absence of any medicine that could help cure it.

These include degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, just to name a few.

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