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A study has identified similar changes in gene activity related to synaptic function in the brains of those with schizophrenia and the elderly, suggesting a common biological link to cognitive impairment, through the analysis of the Synaptic Neuron and Astrocyte Program in brain tissue samples. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
“Science often focuses on what genes each cell type expresses on its own,” said Steve McCarroll, a co-senior author on the study and an institute member at the Broad Institute. “But brain tissue from many people, and machine-learning analyses of those data, helped us recognize a larger system. These cell types are not acting as independent entities, but have really close coordination. The strength of those relationships took our breath away.
McCarroll is also the director of genomic neurobiology for the Broad’s Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research and a professor at Harvard Medical School. Berretta also directs the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center , which provided tissue for the study. Emi Ling, a postdoctoral researcher in McCarroll’s lab, was the study’s first author.The brain works in large part because neurons connect with other neurons at synapses, where they pass signals to one another.
To their surprise, the researchers also found that SNAP varied greatly even among people without schizophrenia, suggesting that SNAP could be involved in cognitive differences in healthy humans. Much of this variation was explained by age; SNAP declined substantially in many — but not all — older individuals, including both people with and without schizophrenia.
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