Niederst, E. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2023

Gamma sensory stimulation and effects on the brain

Findings by the Tsai lab and others 1-8 demonstrate that 40 Hz frequency sensory stimulation induces electrophysiological responses and attenuates pathology in mouse models of Alzheimers disease (AD). A recent study in Nature Neurosciene 9 concluded that the stimulation does not affect endogenous gamma oscillations or amyloid burden. We welcome research investigating 40 Hz sensory stimulation, and the article by Soula et al enhances our understanding of the brains electrophysiological response to 40Hz. However, we respectfully suggest that the data in Soula et al are consistent with a neuronal response to 40 Hz, which we further support with new data in humans. Moreover we contend the non-significant effects on amyloid are due to technical limitations of the study.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Expansion Revealing: Decrowding Proteins to Unmask Invisible Brain Nanostructures

Cells and tissues are made out of nanoscale building blocks, such as proteins, organized in crowded nanostructures. We show that many biomolecules, and the nanostructures in which they are embedded, may be invisible to prior imaging techniques, due to the inaccessibility of labels (e.g., antibodies) to biomolecules embedded within such crowded structures. We developed a technology, expansion revealing (ExR), which isotropically decrowds proteins from each other, to enable their labeling. We use ExR to discover the alignment of presynaptic calcium channels with postsynaptic machinery in intact brain circuits, as well as the existence of periodic amyloid nanoclusters containing ion channel proteins in Alzheimers model mice. Thus, ExR reveals nanostructures within complex biological specimens that were not previously visualizable, and may find broad use in biology. One Sentence SummaryDe-crowding biomolecules with Expansion Revealing unmasks fundamentally new nanostructures in intact brain tissue, which remained invisible otherwise.

bioengineering↗