The brain makes many types of mistakes. Now scientists believe they know where it’s going: photos

There are approximately 170 billion cells within the brain, and as they go about their normal duties, they spend a lot of time—a lot of it. To remain healthy, the mind wants to clear all those particles. However how it actually does this remains a mystery.

Now, two groups of scientists have published 3 papers that give a detailed description of the brain’s waste-removal apparatus. Their insights may help researchers better understand, deal with, and combat various dimensions of brain-related problems.

Papers, all published within the journal Nature, recommend that throughout recreation, slow electrical waves push fluid around cells from deep in the brain to its surface. There, an advanced interface allows the misshapen cargo in that fluid to be absorbed into the bloodstream, which carries them to the liver and kidneys to be removed from the body.

One of the most commonly spent products on Excited is amyloid, the substance that controls sticky plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disorder.

There is growing evidence that during Alzheimer’s disease, the brain’s waste-removal system malfunctions, says Jeffrey Iliff, who researches neurodegenerative diseases at the University of Washington, but he was not part of the earlier research.

Iliff says the ancient findings will help researchers understand where the disease really is and possibly how to treat it.

“If we restore drainage, can we prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease?”. he asks.

A Brief History of Brainwashing

In seminal research dating back more than a decade, Danish scientists Iliff and Dr. Macken Nedergaard first proposed that the cloudy fluid in and around the brain serves as a device for clearing out misplaced cargo. Are part.

Scientists have named it the glymphatic device, alluding to the frame’s lymphatic device, which is helping deal with disorder, preserve fluid boundaries, and filter out misplaced merchandise and strange cells. .

Each program works like plumbing in a space, says Jonathan Kipnis of Washington College in St. Louis, author of two ancient papers.

“You have water pipes and sewage pipes,” says Kipnis. “So the water comes out clear, and then you wash your hands, and the dirty water comes out.”

However the lymphatic system uses a network of thin tubes that move the wrong fluid into the bloodstream. There is a lack of those tubes in the mind.

So scientists have spent a lot of time trying to answer an elementary question, Kipnis says: “How does a waste molecule from the middle of the brain reach the brain’s borders” and end up in the long time frame?

Part of the solution came in 2012 and 2013, when Iliff and Nedergaard began proposing the glymphatic device. He confirmed that while animals sleep, cerebrospinal fluid begins to temporarily accumulate throughout the brain, flushing out dysfunction.

However, who was pushing the fluid? And how was it moving the wrong way around the barrier that normally separates brain tissue from the bloodstream?

waves that wash

Kipnis and his staff began looking at what the brain was doing while sleeping. As part of that effort, they slowed down the potential for faint electrical currents that appear through deep stimulation in animals.

They discovered one thing in common: “By measuring the wave, we are also measuring the flow of interstitial fluid,” the fluid found in the areas surrounding cells, Kipnis says.

It turned out that the waves were acting as a signal, synchronizing the function of neurons and converting them into tiny pumps that pushed fluid toward the surface of the brain, the team reported in February in the journal Neuroscience. Told Nature,

The same thing was revealed in another paper also NatureA team led by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology presented additional evidence that slow electrical waves help reduce misinformed spending.

Older rats in the workforce who develop a form of Alzheimer’s. They exposed the rats to bursts of tones and flashes that occurred 40 times per second.

The stimulation produced brain waves within the animals that occurred at the same, slower frequency.

Tests showed that the waves increased the flow of fresh cerebrospinal fluid into the brain and increased the flow of dirty fluid out of the brain. They also confirmed that the fluid contained amyloid, a substance that builds up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

In a paper published a few weeks ago, Kipnis showed how misfolded particles, including amyloid, are crossing the protective membrane that normally insulates the brain.

Kipnis and his team were concerned with the vein that passes through this membrane.

“Around the vein, you have a sleeve, which is never completely sealed,” he says. “That’s where (cerebrospinal fluid) is coming out” and moving into the lymphatic system of the frame the wrong way.

from rats to humans

Overall, ancient research suggests that keeping the brain’s waste-clearance apparatus functioning requires two distinct steps: one pushing waste into the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain, and the other carrying it through the lymphatic system. To push in and eventually out. of frame.

“We’ve described them separately,” says Iliff, “but from a biological perspective, they are almost certainly coupled.”

Iliff says many of the ancient findings in rats still need to be validated in the country.

“The physiological differences between rodents and humans are quite significant,” he says.

However he says the results are consistent with analyzes of what results from neurodegenerative issues like Alzheimer’s.

Researchers know that the brain’s waste-removal apparatus can also break down due to motion, accidents and diseases that block blood vessels in the brain.

“These are all risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease,” Iliff says.

Iliff says eliminating misplaced spending could lead to Parkinson’s disease, headaches or even depression. So discovering ways to help the brain clear itself out – perhaps by inducing those slow electrical waves – could potentially counteract a huge range of problems.