Neuroscientists from Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have determined how a brain cell surface molecule shapes the way certain neurons behave. The research, published October 2 in Nature , reveals how a molecule, the calcium permeable (CP)-AMPA receptor, suppresses a specific neuron's ability to pay attention to specific external cues, such as your friend's earrings, according to the study in genetically-engineered mice. Understanding why some neurons are less "selective" about their response to certain cues may also help researchers study schizophrenia, epilepsy and autism -; conditions marked by the faulty processing of external cues and misfirings of neurons in the mammalian brain.
"We've discovered that the calcium permeable subtype of AMPA receptors has an added role of suppressing the selectivity of a given neuron," says Ingie Hong, Ph.D., first author and an instructor in neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University Medicine.
Until now, the role of these specific receptors in the wider mammalian brain as it functions in everyday life has been a mystery." Ingie Hong, Johns Hopkins University Medicine Along with Hong, the research was led by Richard Huganir, Ph.D.
, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences and director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who has been studying AMPA receptors for more than 40 years. AMPA receptors are critical to the fast transfe.