Author Name: Annie Froster

Category Name: Health Care

Description:

UVA neuroscientists have discovered that an unexpected form of cellular cleanup takes place in developing brains. If this process goes wrong -- happening too little or too much -- it can cause permanent changes in the brain's wiring. In lab mice, this results in anxiety-like behavior, and it may play a role in neurological conditions such as autism in humans.

The cellular cleaner the researchers spotted, the AIM2 inflammasome, has been associated primarily with the body's immune response to infections but has not been extensively studied in the brain. But there it plays a critical role in ensuring the developing brain is assembled properly and functions correctly, Lammert discovered in collaboration with principal investigator John Lukens, PhD.

"Neurodevelopment is a very complicated process."This form of cell death actually plays a role in removing unwanted cells from the brain to establish a healthy CNS with the correct connections and the right number of cells."

More than half the neurons created during brain development end up dying, so proper cleanup is essential, noted Lukens, of UVA's Department of Neuroscience. "Too much or too little is thought to underlie everything from autism to intellectual disability any type of neurodevelopmental disorder,

For example, ataxia is a condition that causes people to lose control of their movements. "There's a potential that this pathway could be contributing to the neuronal loss that is seen in ataxia. On the one hand, you need it [the cleanup] but if you have too much of it, it can have negative consequences, like, potentially, ataxia. A lot of the early-onset neurodegenerative diseases are associated with mutations in DNA damage repair proteins, and this pathway could also be involved."

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Media Contact:

Annie froster
Journal Manager
Journal of  Speech Pathology and Therapy
Email: speechpathol@oajournal.org