Scientists have discovered ‘amxiety cells’ inside the brains of mice.

Researchers have identified neurons that were shown to regulate anxiety levels in the brains of mice. These ‘anxiety cells’ may shed light on how the human brain responds to intense stress and in turn, open the way to potential treatments to combat anxiety.

Neuroscientists from the University of California, San Francisco, and Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center started out to pinpoint what exactly in the brain causes the feeling of anxiety. The study was published in the journal, Neuron.

“The therapies we have now have significant drawbacks,” said Mazen Kheirbek, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCSF and lead author of the study. “This is another target that we can try to move the field forward for finding new therapies.”

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) an anxiety disorder is defined by one’s constant fear and worry during day to day activities. Some examples include panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Researchers were able to pinpoint these anxiety cells by inserting microscopes into the brains of mice to record cell activity in the hippocampus. This is a region in the brain present in both mice and humans considered to be responsible for helping us learn, create memories, and feel emotions. After inserting the microscopes, the researchers then put the mice in stressful situations and monitored their brain activity.

Co-author of the study and professor of psychiatry at CUIMC, Rene Hen, Ph.D., claims that ‘anxiety cells’ are those that become active when animals are put in places that are “innately frightening to them”. In the case of mice, this is when they are in an open area where predators are likelier to attack, or an elevated platform.

To be certain that these cells caused anxiety, the researchers used a technique called optogenetics, which involve the use of beams of light that control neuron activity. By turning the cells on or off, the rodents exhibited drastically different behavior. When the cells were silenced, the mice spent more time climbing elevated platforms while stimulating the cells caused them to exhibit more anxiety behaviors.

Researchers hope that this discovery may one day lead to treating humans with anxiety disorders.

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Best friends have matching brain activity when shown the same clips, a study revealed.

Brain scans can accurately show just how much you and your best friend are on the same wavelength, a new study revealed. According to a study, published in the journal, Nature Communications, brain waves of close friends line up when they are shown clips pertaining to a wide range of subjects. More so, researchers claim that neural activity can be measured to classify one’s closeness to their companion.

The study was conducted by social psychologist, Carolyn Parkinson of UCLA and his colleagues. They noticed that friends’ brain waves matched when watching various video clips.

“Neural responses to dynamic, naturalistic stimuli, like videos, can give us a window into people’s unconstrained, spontaneous thought processes as they unfold,” notes Professor Parkinson, who led the study.

To reach this conclusion, Parkinson and his team studied the friendship or social ties of nearly 280 graduate students. 42 participants were asked to watch a series of videos while their brain activity was recorded by a magnetic resonance imaging scanner (MRI). The videos covered a range of subjects, including politics, comedy, music videos, and science. Each student watched the clips in the same order. The researchers then compared the neural responses of various pairs across the set of participants to establish which of them were best friends and which were removed from each other within their social network.

MRI scan similarity was found to be strongest among friends, this pattern being present across brain regions involved in high-level reasoning, emotional responding, and directing one’s attention. In order to be certain of the results, researchers introduced variables such as being left-handed or right-handed, age, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Even with these factors taken into account, the results still pointed to strong mental similarities between best friends. The scientists claim that this brain scanning process can also predict the social distance between two people.

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Tiny particles produced by air pollution may be responsible for powerful storms.

Researchers have discovered a possible link between microscopic airborne particles from industrial air pollution and powerful storms.

The study, published in the journal, Science, explains the effects of aerosols, which are commonly produced by urban and industrial pollution, wildfires and other sources.

Previous studies have shown the impact of aerosols on weather and climate, however, the latest findings suggest that even the smallest particles can have disastrous effects on the environment.

According to the study, particles smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair can increase the size of clouds, cause them to produce more rain and intensify storms in the process.

“In areas where aerosols are otherwise limited, such as remote regions of the Amazon rainforest, ultrafine aerosol particles can have a surprisingly strong effect,” said Zhanqing Li, from the University of Maryland in the US.

To arrive at this conclusion, scientists studied the storm-creating capacity of ultra-fine particles that measure less than 50 nanometers across. In contrast, a human red blood cell is approximately 8 thousand nano-meters wide. The study showed how the smallest of particles can stimulate clouds more effectively than their larger counterparts.

According to the researchers, water vapor can build up to extreme levels in a warm and humid environment with no large particles to attract airborne moisture. This causes humidity levels to spike beyond 100 percent, they added.

Ultrafine particles are small in size, yet once they reach large numbers, they can form droplets to draw excess water vapor from the atmosphere. The study claims that this enhanced condensation allows for more powerful updrafts.

As more warm air is pulled into the clouds, more droplets are launched overhead, producing a runaway effect which makes way to stronger storms.

Li claims that this finding will help scientists better understand the physical mechanisms of cloud development when influenced by air pollution. This, in turn, will allow them to develop better ways of predicting storms.

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A study suggests that mosquitoes may be conditioned into avoiding humans by swatting them.

Mosquitoes have been considered to be the most irritating bloodsuckers around. Their buzzing is synonymous with their perseverance and the red bumps that they leave on our skin. These insects don’t let up or so it was previously believed. A new study published in the journal, Cell, suggests that mosquitoes can learn to avoid humans by simply swatting them repeatedly.

Mosquitoes have been known for some time to alternate between victims depending on the season, changing between mostly birds in the summer and both mammals and bird during colder seasons. While the reasons behind their preferences have yet to be discovered, scientists know that the bloodsuckers don’t bite humans at random.

A study conducted by the University of Washington has revealed that mosquitoes “ can in fact learn to associate a particular odor with an unpleasant mechanical shock akin to being swatted. As a result, they’ll avoid that scent the next time,”

For the study, researchers conditioned mosquitoes by forcing them to associate smells of specific people or species with a mechanical shock. This was done by simulating vibrations and accelerations generated by a vortex mixer in the laboratory.

The shocks altered the insects’ behavior and steered them away from the source. In a surprising twist, however, mosquitoes always flew to the smell of a chicken, even when it was associated with a mechanical shock.

Researchers explained how mosquitoes are dependent on dopamine, like any other animal. They reached this conclusion by looking at neuron activity in the olfactory centers of the mosquito brains. The scientists also looked at genetically modified mosquitoes, who lacked dopamine receptors, and noticed how they lost the ability to tell apart odors from mechanical shocks.

Senior author of the study and UW professor of biology, Jeff Riffell, claims that the new findings will lead to more effective tools for mosquito control.

The researchers are now focusing on how these insects choose their victims, an ability that is currently believed to also be linked to dopamine.

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