Category: Science News

{A new study has found that paracetamol (acetaminophen), which is used extensively during pregnancy, has a strong association with autism spectrum symptoms in boys and for both genders in relation to attention-related and hyperactivity symptoms.}

The findings were published this week in the International Journal of Epidemiology. This is the first study of its kind to report an independent association between the use of this drug in pregnancy and autism spectrum symptoms in children. It is also the first study to report different effects on boys and girls. Comparing persistently to nonexposed children, the study has found an increase of 30 per cent in the risk of detriment to some attention functions, and an increase of two clinical symptoms of autism spectrum symptoms in boys.

Researchers in Spain recruited 2644 mother-child pairs in a birth cohort study during pregnancy. 88 per cent were evaluated when the child was one year old, and 79.9 per cent were evaluated when they were five years old. Mothers were asked about their use of paracetamol during pregnancy and the frequency of use was classified as never, sporadic, or persistent. Exact doses could not be noted due to mothers being unable to recall them exactly.

43 per cent of children evaluated at age one and 41 per cent assessed at age five were exposed to any paracetamol at some point during the first 32 weeks of pregnancy. When assessed at age five, exposed children were at higher risk of hyperactivity or impulsivity symptoms. Persistently exposed children in particular showed poorer performance on a computerised test measuring inattention, impulsivity and visual speed processing.

Boys also showed more autism spectrum symptoms when persistently exposed to paracetamol. Lead author Claudia Avella-Garcia, researcher at CREAL, an ISGlobal allied centre in Barcelona, explained that, “although we measured symptoms and not diagnoses, an increase in the number of symptoms that a child has, can affect him or her, even if they are not severe enough to warrant a clinical diagnosis of a neurodevelopmental disorder.”

Co-author Dr. Jordi Júlvez, also a researcher at CREAL, commented on the possible reasoning for the effects of paracetamol on neurodevelopment: “Paracetamol could be harmful to neurodevelopment for several reasons. First of all, it relieves pain by acting on cannabinoid receptors in the brain. Since these receptors normally help determine how neurons mature and connect with one another, paracetamol could alter these important processes. It can also affect the development of the immune system, or be directly toxic to some fetuses that may not have the same capacity as an adult to metabolize this drug, or by creating oxidative stress.”

There could also be an explanation for why boys are more likely to have autism spectrum symptoms: “The male brain may be more vulnerable to harmful influences during early life,” said Claudia Avella-Garcia. “Our differing gender results suggest that androgenic endocrine disruption, to which male brains could be more sensitive, may explain the association.”

The study concluded that the widespread exposure of infants to paracetamol in utero could increase the number of children with ADHD or autism spectrum symptoms.

However, they stressed further studies should be conducted with more precise dosage measurements, and that the risks versus benefits of paracetamol use during pregnancy and early life should be assessed before treatment recommendations are made.

{An epidemiological study analyzing the association of butter consumption with chronic disease and mortality finds that butter was only weakly associated with total mortality, not associated with heart disease, and slightly inversely associated (protective) with diabetes.}

Butter consumption was only weakly associated with total mortality, not associated with cardiovascular disease, and slightly inversely associated (protective) with diabetes, according to a new epidemiological study which analyzed the association of butter consumption with chronic disease and all-cause mortality. This systematic review and meta-analysis, published in PLOS ONE, was led by Tufts scientists including Laura Pimpin, Ph.D., former postdoctoral fellow at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts in Boston, and senior author Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H., dean of the School.

Based on a systematic review and search of multiple online academic and medical databases, the researchers identified nine eligible research studies including 15 country-specific cohorts representing 636,151 unique individuals with a total of 6.5 million person-years of follow-up. Over the total follow-up period, the combined group of studies included 28,271 deaths, 9,783 cases of cardiovascular disease, and 23,954 cases of new-onset type 2 diabetes. The researchers combined the nine studies into a meta-analysis of relative risk.

Butter consumption was standardized across all nine studies to 14 grams/day, which corresponds to one U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated serving of butter (or roughly one tablespoon). Overall, the average butter consumption across the nine studies ranged from roughly one-third of a serving per day to 3.2 servings per day. The study found mostly small or insignificant associations of each daily serving of butter with total mortality, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

“Even though people who eat more butter generally have worse diets and lifestyles, it seemed to be pretty neutral overall,” said Pimpin, now a data analyst in public health modelling for the UK Health Forum. “This suggests that butter may be a “middle-of-the-road” food: a more healthful choice than sugar or starch, such as the white bread or potato on which butter is commonly spread and which have been linked to higher risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease; and a worse choice than many margarines and cooking oils — those rich in healthy fats such as soybean, canola, flaxseed, and extra virgin olive oils — which would likely lower risk compared with either butter or refined grains, starches, and sugars.”

“Overall, our results suggest that butter should neither be demonized nor considered “back” as a route to good health,” said Mozaffarian. “More research is needed to better understand the observed potential lower risk of diabetes, which has also been suggested in some other studies of dairy fat. This could be real, or due to other factors linked to eating butter — our study does not prove cause-and-effect.”

{A new study describes a technology that could lead to new therapeutics for traumatic brain injuries.The discovery provides a means of homing drugs or nanoparticles to injured areas of the brain.}

“We have found a peptide sequence of four amino acids, cysteine, alanine, glutamine, and lysine (CAQK), that recognizes injured brain tissue,” said Erkki Ruoslahti, M.D., Ph.D., distinguished professor in SBP’s NCI-Designated Cancer Center and senior author of the study. “This peptide could be used to deliver treatments that limit the extent of damage.”

About 2.5 million people in the US sustain traumatic brain injuries each year, usually resulting from car crashes, falls, and violence. While the initial injury cannot be repaired, the damaging effects of breaking open brain cells and blood vessels that ensue over the following hours and days can be minimized.

“Current interventions for acute brain injury are aimed at stabilizing the patient by reducing intracranial pressure and maintaining blood flow, but there are no approved drugs to stop the cascade of events that cause secondary injury,” said Aman Mann, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher in Ruoslahti’s lab and first author of the study.

More than one hundred compounds are currently in preclinical tests to lessen brain damage following injury. These candidate drugs block the events that cause secondary damage, including inflammation, high levels of free radicals, over-excitation of neurons, and signaling that leads to cell death.

“Our goal was to find an alternative to directly injecting therapeutics into the brain, which is invasive and can add complications,” explained Ruoslahti. “Using this peptide to deliver drugs means they could be administered intravenously, but still reach the site of injury in sufficient quantities to have an effect.”

The CAQK peptide binds to components of the meshwork surrounding brain cells called chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans. Amounts of these large, sugar-decorated proteins increase following brain injury.

“Not only did we show that CAQK carries drug-sized molecules and nanoparticles to damaged areas in mouse models of acute brain injury, we also tested peptide binding to injured human brain samples and found the same selectivity,” added Mann.

“This peptide could also be used to create tools to identify brain injuries, particularly mild ones, by attaching the peptide to materials that can be detected by medical imaging devices,” Ruoslahti commented. “And, because the peptide can deliver nanoparticles that can be loaded with large molecules, it could enable enzyme or gene-silencing therapies.”

This platform technology has been licensed by a startup company, AivoCode, which was recently awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation for further development and commercialization.

Ruoslahti’s team and their collaborators are currently testing the applications of these findings using animal models of other central nervous system (CNS) injuries such as spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis.

{A possible epigenetic link between the environment and pubertal timing has been discovered by researchers. To a large extent, pubertal timing is heritable, but the underlying genetic causes are still unexplained. Researchers have now studied how chemical modifications of the human genome (so-called epigenetic modifications) change when girls and boys enter puberty.The results indicate that such epigenetic changes are involved in defining the onset of puberty.}

Danish researchers have discovered a possible epigenetic link between the environment and pubertal timing. To a large extent, pubertal timing is heritable, but the underlying genetic causes are still unexplained. Researchers have now studied how chemical modifications of the human genome (so-called epigenetic modifications) change when girls and boys enter puberty. The results indicate that such epigenetic changes are involved in defining the onset of puberty.

Danish girls’ pubertal onset has decreased from 11 to 10 years. Similar, but less pronounced, changes have been observed in boys. This has led researchers to question the involvement of genetics and recognize that genes are not alone in influencing a child’s pubertal timing.

In this new study from EDMaRC at Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, researchers therefore focused on the role of epigenetics and have found a number of areas in the human genome, which is controlled epigenetically during puberty. The researchers found that these epigenetic changes cause the upregulation of genes that are important for pubertal development. One of the newly discovered ‘puberty genes’ is TRIP6 (Thyroid Hormone Receptor Interactor 6), which is increasingly expressed through puberty, due to changes in the epigenetic control of the gene.

Epigenetics is a leading mechanism by which our environment communicates with our genes. Environmental and lifestyle factors in the broadest sense can affect the epigenetic regulation of genes and thereby control whether, where and to what extent the genes are expressed. The identified epigenetic changes during puberty are therefore our best lead towards understanding how environmental factors can affect pubertal onset.

“To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate how the environment can affect the pubertal onset in humans. It gives us a significant insight in to the crucial role of epigenetic factors on our reproductive development,” says Professor Anders Juul, Senior author of the study.

“We’ve seen a tendency of especially girls starting puberty earlier than before and this study emphasizes the importance of understanding the role of environmental impact on pubertal development,” he adds.

Highly specific changes in methylation of a child’s DNA could differentiate children according to whether they had entered puberty or not and thus may be used to predict a child’s pubertal stage.

“Changes in the DNA methylation patterns can be caused by many different factors. However, we could see very specific changes when children went through puberty, and have subsequently shown that this also leads to changes in the expression of the methylated genes,” says Senior Researcher in epigenetics Kristian Almstrup, who led the study.

{Species across the world are rapidly going extinct due to human activities, but humans are also causing rapid evolution and the emergence of new species. A new study published today summarises the causes of humanmade speciation, and discusses why newly evolved species cannot simply replace extinct wild species. The study was led by the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen.}

A growing number of examples show that humans not only contribute to the extinction of species but also drive evolution, and in some cases the emergence of entirely new species. This can take place through mechanisms such as accidental introductions, domestication of animals and crops, unnatural selection due to hunting, or the emergence of novel ecosystems such as the urban environment.

Although tempting to conclude that human activities thus benefit as well as deplete global biodiversity, the authors stress that extinct wild species cannot simply be replaced with newly evolved ones, and that nature conservation remains just as urgent.

“The prospect of ‘artificially’ gaining novel species through human activities is unlikely to elicit the feeling that it can offset losses of ‘natural’ species. Indeed, many people might find the prospect of an artificially biodiverse world just as daunting as an artificially impoverished one” says lead author and Postdoc Joseph Bull from the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen.

The study which was carried out in collaboration with the University of Queensland was published today in Proceedings of Royal Society B. It highlights numerous examples of how human activities influence species’ evolution. For instance: as the common house mosquito adapted to the environment of the underground railway system in London, it established a subterranean population. Now named the ‘London Underground mosquito’, it can no longer interbreed with its above ground counterpart and is effectively thought to be a new species.

“We also see examples of domestication resulting in new species. According to a recent study, at least six of the world’s 40 most important agricultural crops are considered entirely new” explains Joseph Bull.

Furthermore, unnatural selection due to hunting can lead to new traits emerging in animals, which can eventually lead to new species, and deliberate or accidental relocation of species can lead to hybridization with other species. Due to the latter, more new plant species in Europe have appeared than are documented to have gone extinct over the last three centuries.

Although it is not possible to quantify exactly how many speciation events have been caused through human activities, the impact is potentially considerable, the study states.

“In this context, ‘number of species’ becomes a deeply unsatisfactory measure of conservation trends, because it does not reflect many important aspects of biodiversity. Achieving a neutral net outcome for species numbers cannot be considered acceptable if weighing wild fauna against relatively homogenous domesticated species. However, considering speciation alongside extinction may well prove important in developing a better understanding of our impact upon global biodiversity. We call for a discussion about what we, as a society, actually want to conserve about nature” says Associate Professor Martine Maron from the University of Queensland.

Researchers do agree that current extinction rates may soon lead to a 6th period of mass extinction. Since the last Ice Age, 11.500 years ago, it is estimated that 255 mammals and 523 bird species has gone extinct, often due to human activity. In the same period, humans have relocated almost 900 known species and domesticated more than 470 animals and close to 270 plant species.

{Parents, and especially fathers, play a vital role in developing healthy behaviors in young adults and helping to prevent obesity in their children. When it came to predicting whether a young male will become overweight or obese, the mother-son relationship mattered far less than the relationship between father and son.}

A new University of Guelph study has found that parents, and especially fathers, play a vital role in developing healthy behaviours in young adults and helping to prevent obesity in their children.

The researchers found that young adults who grew up in stable families with quality parental relationships were more likely to have healthy diet, activity and sleep behaviours, and were less likely to be obese.

Surprisingly, they found that when it came to predicting whether a young male will become overweight or obese, the mother-son relationship mattered far less than the relationship between father and son.

“Much of the research examining the influence of parents has typically examined only the mother’s influence or has combined information across parents,” said Prof. Jess Haines, Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, and lead author of the paper.

“Our results underscore the importance of examining the influence fathers have on their children and to develop strategies to help fathers support the development of healthy behaviours among their children.”

The researchers studied more than 3,700 females and more than 2,600 males, all aged 14-24, who participated in the Growing Up Today Study 2 in 2011.

Among both males and females, 80 per cent said they had high family function, defined by how well the family managed daily routines, and how family members fulfilled their roles and connected emotionally.

In all, six out of 10 females and half of males reported high-quality relationships with their parents.

High family functioning and quality family relationships were associated with lower odds of eating disorders, more frequent physical activity and more sleep. Females in these families also reported eating less fast food, and were less likely to be overweight or obese.

Among males, father relationship quality had a greater impact on their odds of being overweight or obese.

“It appears the father-son parent relationship has a stronger influence on sons than the mother-daughter relationship has on young women,” said Haines.

“However, more research is needed to explore the mechanisms by which father-son relationship quality influences weight status in youth and to explore possible differences in these mechanisms among males and females.”

In general, the findings show the importance of family behaviours and relationships on the health of young adults from an early age, Haines noted.

“These can be powerful determinants of weight and related behaviours,” she said.

“A high level of family dysfunction may interfere with the development of healthful behaviours due to the families’ limited ability to develop routines related to eating, sleep or activity behaviours, which can lead to excess weight gain.”

{{The study is published in the Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.}}

{{ {Parents in the United States generally are not as happy as those who aren’t parents. Not only that, the U.S. has the largest “happiness gap” among parents compared to nonparents in 22 industrialized countries, according to a report by researchers at Baylor University, the University of Texas at Austin and Wake Forest University. The report — prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families housed at the University of Texas at Austin — poses the question: “Why?” The answer: The relative lack of workplace “packages” of policies such as paid sick time, paid vacation, flexible work hours and paid maternal or parental leave, said co-researcher Matthew Andersson, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University and formerly a researcher at Yale University’s Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course.} }}

“The United States, without any standard paid leave available to mothers or parents — or any standard vacation or sick leave to support raising a dependent child — falls strikingly behind all the other countries we examined in terms of providing for parents’ happiness and overall well-being,” he said.

In countries in which such policies are mandated by the government or industry, a smaller gap exists between parents and non-parents. “In fact, in those places, parents might be slightly happier,” Andersson said.

The research, funded with the support of the National Science Foundation and to be published in the American Journal of Sociology in September, examined comparative data from the United States, European countries, Australia, Russia and New Zealand, which was gathered from the International Social Surveys and the European Social Surveys. While some critics say that good family support policies come at the expense of non-parents, they actually improved happiness of everyone in the country, “with an extra happiness bonus for parents of minor children,” the report said.

The same was true of subsidized child care, which might be assumed to only benefit parents.

“Another striking finding was that giving money to parents in child allowances or monthly payments had less effect on parental happiness that giving them the tools — such as flexible work time — to combine employment with parenting,” the report said. Besides gathering policy information of the countries, researchers took into account each country’s gross domestic product and fertility rate to ensure the findings did not simply reflect economic status.

Researchers tested a number of hypotheses, among them whether more unexpected births and larger families might be associated with parents being less happy than child-free people. But those factors were relatively unimportant, the study showed. The research also found that Americans are not generally an unhappy people. On a scale from 1 to 10, they hover in the 8 to 10 range, compared with, for example, France, where people tend to rate their levels from 5 to 7.

{Obese male mice and normal weight female mice produce female pups that are overweight at birth through childhood, and have delayed development of their breast tissue as well as increased rates of breast cancer.}

The findings, published online June 24 in Scientific Reports by Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers, come from one of the first animal studies to examine the impact of paternal obesity on future generations’ cancer risk.

The researchers say they’ve found evidence that obesity changes the microRNA (miRNA) signature — epigenetic regulators of gene expression — in both the dad’s sperm and the daughter’s breast tissue, suggesting that miRNAs may carry the epigenetic information from obese dads to their daughters.

The miRNAs identified regulate insulin receptor signaling, which is linked to alterations in body weight, and other molecular pathways that are associated with cancer development such as the hypoxia signaling pathway.

Obesity seems to sometimes run in families, as do some breast cancers. Maternal obesity is believed to influence both conditions in humans — a woman who is heavy in pregnancy can produce larger babies, who may have increased risk of breast cancer later in life. While much of the focus has been on the maternal side, few if any studies have looked at the influence of dad’s overweight and obesity on his offspring’s cancer risk.

“This study provides evidence that, in animals, a fathers’ body weight at the time of conception affects both their daughters’ body weight both at birth and in childhood as well as their risk of breast cancer later in life,” says the study’s lead investigator, Sonia de Assis, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi.

“Of course our study was done in mice, but it recapitulates recent findings in humans which show that obese men have significant epigenetic alterations in their sperm compared to lean men. Our animal study suggests that those epigenetic alterations in sperm may have consequences for next generation cancer risk.”

de Assis says the next step in this research is to see if the same associations regarding breast cancer risk hold for daughters of human fathers who are overweight around the time of conception.

“Until we know about this association in men, we should stick to what we all know is good advice: women — and men — should eat a balanced diet, keep a healthy body weight and life-style not only for their own benefit but also to give their offspring’s the best chances of being healthy.”

{Climate impacts life strategies, time orientation, self-control}

Researchers have long struggled to explain why some violent crime rates are higher near the equator than other parts of the world. Now, a team of researchers have developed a model that could help explain why.

This new model goes beyond the simple fact that hotter temperatures seem to be linked to more aggressive behavior.

The researchers believe that hot climates and less variation in seasonal temperatures leads to a faster life strategy, less focus on the future, and less self-control — all of which contribute to more aggression and violence.

“Climate shapes how people live, it affects the culture in ways that we don’t think about in our daily lives,” said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University.

Paul van Lange, lead author of the study and a professor of psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) added, “We believe our model can help explain the impact of climate on rates of violence in different parts of the world.”

The researchers, which included Maria I. Rinderu of VU, call the new model CLASH (CLimate Aggression, and Self-control in Humans). They describe the CLASH model in an online article in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Many studies have shown that levels of violence and aggression are higher in hot climates, according to the researchers.

“But the two leading explanations of why that is so aren’t satisfactory,” Bushman said.

The General Aggression Model (which Bushman helped develop) suggests hot temperatures make people uncomfortable and irritated, which makes them more aggressive. “But that doesn’t explain more extreme acts, such as murder,” he said.

Another explanation (Routine Activity Theory) is that people are outdoors and interacting more with others when the weather is warm, which leads to more opportunities for conflict. But that doesn’t explain why there’s more violence when the temperature is 95 degrees F (35 °C) than when it is 75 degrees F (24 °C) — even though people might be outside under both circumstances.

The CLASH model states that it is not just hotter temperatures that lead to more violence — it is also climates that have less seasonal variation in temperature.

“Less variation in temperature, combined with heat, brings some measure of consistency to daily life,” Rinderu said.

That means there is less need to plan for large swings between warm and cold weather. The result is a faster life strategy that isn’t as concerned about the future and leads to less need for self-control.

“Strong seasonal variation in temperature affects culture in powerful ways. Planning in agriculture, hoarding, or simply preparing for cold winters shapes the culture in many ways, often with people not even noticing it. But it does shape how much a culture values time and self-control,” Van Lange said.

“If there is less variation, you’re freer to do what you want now, because you’re not preparing foods or chopping firewood or making winter clothes to get you through the winter. You also may be more concerned with the immediate stress that comes along with parasites and other risks of hot climates, such as venomous animals.”

People living in these climates are oriented to the present rather than the future and have a fast life strategy — they do things now.

“We see evidence of a faster life strategy in hotter climates with less temperature variation — they are less strict about time, they have less use of birth control, they have children earlier and more often,” Bushman said.

With a faster life strategy and an orientation toward the present, people have to practice less self-control, he said. That can lead people to react more quickly with aggression and sometimes violence.

The theory is not deterministic and isn’t meant to suggest that people in hotter, consistent climates can’t help themselves when it comes to violence and aggression.

“How people approach life is a part of culture and culture is strongly affected by climate,” Van Lange said. “Climate doesn’t make a person, but it is one part of what influences each of us. We believe it shapes the culture in important ways,” he said.

Since CLASH is a new theory, studies have to be done to prove it is correct. But Bushman said a lot of evidence already suggests that the theory may be on to something.

“We believe CLASH can help account for differences in aggression and violence both within and between countries around the world,” he said. “We think it provides a strong framework for understanding the violence differences we see around the world.”

{A team of researchers has developed the first scalable method to identify different subtypes of neurons in the human brain. The research lays the groundwork for ‘mapping’ the gene activity in the human brain and could help provide a better understanding of brain functions and disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and depression.}

By isolating and analyzing the nuclei of individual human brain cells, researchers identified 16 neuronal subtypes in the cerebral cortex — the brain’s outer layer of neural tissue responsible for cognitive functions including memory, attention and decision making. The team, led by researchers at the University of California San Diego, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Illumina, published their findings in the June 24 online issue of the journal Science.

“We’re providing a unified framework to look at and compare individual neurons, which can help us find out how many unique types of neurons exist,” said Kun Zhang, bioengineering professor at the University of California, San Diego and a corresponding author of the study.

Researchers can use these different neuronal subtypes to build what Zhang calls a “reference map” of the human brain — a foundation to understand the differences between a healthy brain and a diseased brain.

“In the future, patients with brain disorders or abnormalities could be diagnosed and treated based on how they differ from the reference map. This is analogous to what’s being done with the reference human genome map,” Zhang said.

The new study reflects a growing understanding that individual brain cells are unique: they express different types of genes and perform different functions. To better understand this diversity, researchers analyzed more than 3,200 single human neurons in six Brodmann areas, which are regions of the cerebral cortex classified by their functions and arrangements of neurons.

Through an interdisciplinary collaborative effort, the team developed a new method to isolate and sequence individual cell nuclei. TSRI researchers led by neuroscience professor Jerold Chun obtained the samples from a post mortem brain and focused on isolating the neuronal nuclei. Zhang’s lab worked with Fluidigm, a manufacturer of microfluidic chips for single-cell studies, to develop a protocol to identify and quantify RNA molecules in individual neuronal nuclei. Scientists at San Diego-based Illumina sequenced the resulting RNA libraries. Researchers led by biochemistry professor Wei Wang at UC San Diego developed algorithms to cluster and identify 16 neuronal subtypes from the sequenced datasets.

Researchers deciphered what types of genes were “turned on” within each nucleus and revealed that various combinations of the 16 subtypes tended to cluster in cortical layers and Brodmann areas, helping explain why these regions look and function differently.

Neurons exhibited many differences in their transcriptomic profiles — the patterns of genes that are being actively expressed by these cells — revealing single neurons with shared, as well as unique, characteristics that likely lead to difference in cellular function.

“We’re finding new ways to understand the basic building blocks of the brain,” said Blue Lake, a postdoctoral researcher in Zhang’s lab and a co-first author of the study. “Our study opens the door to look at global gene expression patterns and how that defines cell types within a normal tissue, which can also be used to see what’s abnormal in terms of disease or disorders.”

In future studies, researchers aim to analyze neurons in other Brodmann areas of the brain and investigate what subtypes exist in other brain regions. They also plan to study neurons from multiple post mortem human brains (this study only involved one) to investigate neuronal diversity among individuals.