Word: neurone
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...protein muck that includes a substance called alpha-synuclein. No one knows exactly what alpha-synuclein does, but it's believed to play a role in the smooth transmission of nerve signals. When the substance clumps, it can't do the work it was designed to do, leading to neuron damage, loss of the neurotransmitter dopamine and eventually the familiar shakiness of such well-known Parkinson's sufferers as Janet Reno and Muhammad...
...that includes a substance called alpha-synuclein. No one knows exactly what alpha-synuclein does, but it’s believed to play a role in the smooth transmission of nerve signals. When the substance clumps, it can’t do the work it was designed to do, leading to neuron damage, loss of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and eventually to the familiar shakiness of such well-known Parkinson’s sufferers as Janet Reno and Muhammed...
...waiting to find out. Other possible treatments now under study include boosting anti-oxidants, which would protect brain cells from free radicals, highly reactive molecules that are byproducts of oxidation; and blocking the body’s production of compounds called excitatory amino acids, which can sometimes cause neuron damage. It’s hard to say which, if any, of these treatments will likely succeed, but with science closing in from so many directions, it’s possible that Parkinson’s disease-for the first time-may find itself...
Ruvkun and other scientists choose to work with the laboratory roundworm, a tiny bacteria-eating soil-dweller, because the sequence of its entire genome is known and its 302-neuron nervous system has been described in detail...
Douglas R. Hofstadter wrote an essay about ants as a metaphor for how the brain works. Each individual neuron, or ant, has no understanding why it does what it does. It just fires every so often, or searches for food when it is hungry. But looking at this level makes it impossible to see the complexity at the higher level. Ant colonies move, grow and make decisions unfathomable to the individual ant much as our minds have a consciousness way beyond the power or influence of any one neuron. Our society is similar; much happens at a higher level that...