Skip to main content

Post 6

By
My initials thoughts when reading Ayhan et al. 2011 is that modelling schizophrenia based on a single gene mutation seemed like an oversimplification of a complex disorder. However, I do realize how difficult it is to even attempt to model this disorder. I thought it was really interesting to see that the gene expression has to happen at particular critical periods in order to cause changes in behavior.  This is something we have been talking about a lot in the class Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (BBI). Something else we have been talking about a lot in BBI is that these critical periods are usually very different in females and males. This paper used both females and males and there are differences in behaviors between genders with the forced swim test (FST) and tail suspension task (TST) but the paper never offers a thorough explanation as to what they might think this means. I would have like their thoughts on the differences in critical period between females and males with schizophrenia for this gene.

The second paper, Burrows et al. 2015, was my favorite of the two and takes a very different approach to modelling schizophrenia. I was actually unaware that environmental factors needed to be taken into consideration with schizophrenia; I was under the misconception that it is a purely genetic disease. I had seen the environmental enrichment (EE) paradigm used in studies of depression but to see it implemented in this context was very cool.  I was a little confused as to why this paper did not also use an environment derived paradigm (small cage without standard bedding maybe?) as additional comparison for the differences between the knockouts, as I feel like this would have provided even more support to idea that EE is responsible for altering behavioral impairments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gut-Brain Interactions: Buffington et al, Reber et al 2016

By
April 13 Papers (Buffington et. al, Reber et. al) I found this week’s papers to be quite novel in that they both proposed potential treatments for neurodevelopmental or psychiatric disorders that target bacterial or microbial abnormalities and how these give rise to certain behavioral and physical symptoms associated with the disorders. I thought this was a very unusual yet interesting approach, and as I have not previously studied the gut-brain axis, these papers offered me a fresh perspective on researching psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. They were also unconventional in their focus of the physical symptoms that often accompany mental disorders, as this is not something that I have seen many other papers touch upon very much. Particularly, I was surprised by the Reber et al paper’s focus on the link between psychiatric disorders and inflammation in organs other than the brain, such as the colon, and the Buffington et al paper’s description of a relationship between ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gut-brain axis

By
This weeks papers Reber et al. 2016 and Buffington et al. 2016 present a super interesting look into the gut-brain axis. Regarding both of these papers, it was amazing to see how potent favorable or unfavorable gut microbiome compositions are in affecting neuronal signaling and overall behavior. Reber et al. shows how immunoregulatory immunization with specifically heat killed M.vaccae can serve as a protective factor against chronic subordinate stress induce colotis as well as behavioral symptoms due to chronic stress as such. Interestringly, this paper depleted regulatory T cell activity via the anti CD25 antibody in order to show that the antiinflammatory mechanism induced by m vaccae immunization is depented on the secondary regulatory mechanisms offered by Treg proliferation and signaling. But, when T reg signaling was removed, this did not seem to cause a significant change in behavior . Therefore, this begs the consideration of what othe rmechanisms may be at play in order ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ramirez et al.: 2013 and 2015 Papers

By
In these papers, Ramirez et al. strive to understand how memory encoding via optogenetic manipulation of engram-bearing cells in the hippocampus, specifically the dentate gyrus, can affect an animal’s response to a stressful context.  The first paper, published in 2013, was crucial to the field as it introduced this very exciting technique; in this paper, Ramirez et al. use tet-tag to manipulate brain circuity and establish associations between two contexts. Throughout the paper, this is referred to as “false memories.” Using these artificial memories, the investigators are able to manipulate the animal’s fear response in a specific context. Specifically, after the animals are conditioned to a repeated fearful stimulus (a foot shock, in context B), activation of the involved DG cells in a different context (context A’) will also initiate a fear response (in absence of any foot shock). In this experiment, the false memory is used to create an unnatural fear association in a given...
Post a Comment
Read more