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Web edition: August 15, 2012
Print edition: September 22, 2012; Vol.182 #6 (p. 15)
The brain is a self-cleaning machine. A previously unknown plumbing system blasts out waste by flushing it with the brain’s cleaning solution — cerebrospinal fluid.
Jeffrey Iliff of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York and his colleagues watched cerebrospinal fluid flowing through the brains of living mice using an advanced imaging technique called two-photon laser scanning microscopy. First, the fluid rushed into the brain by piggybacking on the outer surfaces of arteries. Once in the brain, the fluid swept away wastes such as the protein amyloid beta, which accumulates in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, the brain expelled the liquid through large cellular drains.
Channels on specialized brain cells called astrocytes control the fluid flow, the team reports in the Aug. 15 Science Translational Medicine. Mice lacking these channels on their astrocytes had sluggish plumbing. Malfunctions of a similar plumbing system in humans could be behind brain conditions in which harmful proteins accumulate in the brain, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and traumatic brain injury.
Citations
J. Iliff, et al. A paravascular pathway facilitates CSF flow through the brain parenchyma and the clearance of interstitial solutes, including amyloid B. Science Translational Medicine, Vol. 147, August 15, 2012. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3003748.
Suggested Reading
N. Seppa. Early testing for Alzheimer’s. Science News, Vol. 176, August 15, 2009, p. 10. Available online: [Go to]
L. Sanders. A protein’s ebb and flow. Science News, Vol. 179, January 15, 2011, p. 15. Available online: [Go to]
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Tags: brain clean-up, brain evolution, melatonin function, neural cells evolution
A.
Another Wheel Reinvention
Brain's hidden sewers revealed
Specialized cells host a hitherto unknown cleansing system.
sciencenews.org
B.
articlesbase
life-is-simpler-than-they-tell-us
Now we can appreciate the fractal nature of life's evolution. It is ever-continuous ever-enhanced ever-complexed cooperation. Now we can understand why, and grosso modo how, all the organs and processes and signals found in multicelled organisms have their origins in the monocells communities, cultures. And this includes the functions of serotonin and melatonin and, yes, the evolution of neural cells and the neural systems with their intricate outer-membrane shapes and functionings and with their high energy consumption requirements.
C.
immunityageing
Melatonin Origin And Function
Dov Henis (2009-02-03)
Melatonin's role was to signal that the genes are asleep, their functional activities are shut off, and it is time for the security and maintenance crews to do their tasks, especially to clean up the intercell environment, for keeping the community of cells in proper state.
Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)
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