A new study published in Cell Stem Cell provides the first cellular evidence that making new brain cells in adults supports verbal learning and memory, which enables people to have conversations and to remember what they hear. This discovery could point to new approaches to restore cognitive function.  The study, led by scientists from USC Stem Cell and the USC Neurorestoration Center at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, relied on brain tissue from patients with drug-resistant cases of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE), which involves seizures as well as accelerated cognitive decline.  The researchers found that MTLE patients experience cognitive decline in many areas – including a dramatic decline in verbal learning and memory, as well as for intelligence, during the first 20 years of seizures. During those same two decades, neurogenesis slows to the point where immature brain cells became nearly undetectable. Based on these observations, the scientists searched for links between the number of immature brain cells and the major areas of MTLE-related cognitive decline. They found the strongest association occurs between the declining number of immature brain cells and verbal learning and memory. 

Opioids are often first-line treatments for cancer-related pain, but they can suppress the immune system and reduce the effectiveness of immunotherapy. New research from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center found that a type of drug called peripherally restricted OPRM1 antagonists (PAMORAs) blocked opioid-induced immunosuppression and improved response rates to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in a mouse model of head and neck cancer.

Researchers from Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience have discovered a new pathway to forming long-term memories in the brain. Their work suggests that long-term memory can form independently of short-term memory, a finding that opens exciting possibilities for understanding memory-related conditions.

In a provocative new study, scientists challenge a fundamental tenet in neuroscience about the shape of axons -- the long, thin filaments radiating from nerve cells that transmit electrical signals from cell to cell  – and propose a new model for understanding how information is transmitted in the brain. The study, led by Shigeki Watanabe of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, was partly conducted in the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Neurobiology course and appears this week in Nature Neuroscience.