Scientists have found an early step in how the brain?s inhibitory cells get excited. A natural balance of excitement and inhibition keeps the brain from firing electrical impulses randomly and excessively, resulting in problems such as schizophrenia and seizures.
However excitement is required to put on the brakes.
Georgia Regent University researchers have found that the protein erbin, crucial to brain development, is critical to the excitement.
It was known that a protein on the cell surface called TARP gamma-2, also known as stargazing, interacts with a brain cell receptor called AMPA, ensuring the receptor finds the cells surface. It is here that the receptor can be activated by the neurotransmitter glutamate.
AMPA receptor activation is essential to activation of the NMDA receptor, which enables cells to communicate, ultimately enabling learning and memory, said Dr. Lin Mei, director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. How TARP gamma-2 was controlled, was an unknown.
Inside the nucleus of inhibitory cells in areas of the brain that control learning and memory, the researchers found erbin interacts with TARP gamma-2, enabling it to survive.
Researchers also found that erbin is only in these inhibitory neurons, called interneurons. They?re working on what they believe to be the counterpart for excitatory cells, which account for about 80 percent of brain cells.
When scientists ablated the erbin gene in mice or kept erbin from interacting with TARP gamma-2, a protein that helps anchor the AMPA receptor on the cell surface, TARP gamma-2 couldn?t do its job. The result was less receptors on the cell surface and mice that were hyperactive with impaired learning and memory.
Urvaksh Karkaria covers Technology and Health Care
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