You can imagine a neuron in the brain’s cortex, or anywhere else in the body, as a city with incoming freight road networks. Neurons have quite a few inward-bound roads (dendrites) packed with freight that receive signals and converge near their city centers (the cell body), but there is always one exit highway (the axon).
To assess characteristic differences between neurons, researchers use neurophysiological measurements such as repetitive firing. It is like assessing how well a city’s infrastructure can handle high amounts of incoming traffic (stimuli) by measuring the speed of the outgoing traffic (APs). Continue reading Human vs. Mouse: Are Human Cells Smarter?

With the global prevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2), coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected the lives of billions of people and caused millions of deaths worldwide[1]. How to tame COVID-19 into submission remains quite challenging. But as the old saying goes: all roads lead to Rome, different diseases could share similar pathogenic processes. Continue reading COVID-19 treatment: what we can learn from Lupus

Imagine celebrating a huge party at your home. All your friends have attended and brought snacks and booze. After a fun and long night, most of your friends have left. You look around and realize that you are surrounded by empty beer bottles, crumbs of food and even some confetti that seems to have popped out of nowhere. You decide it’s better to tidy up now so that you can wake up in a clean house tomorrow. You and your remaining friends start cleaning right away. While scrubbing, you start wondering, would our brains do the same for us? Continue reading A Glymphatic System: Controversial but Conceivable

Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) is a rare, genetic disorder where, slowly, but progressively extra bone formation develops outside the body’s skeleton. A flare-up of new bone formation can be triggered spontaneously or by everyday traumas to the body, such as from falling down stairs or bumping against the kitchen counter. Continue reading Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva: bone formation outside the skeleton

The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. This is not that surprising if you take into account that it requires more than 7 thousand liters of water and 2kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) to make a single pair of jeans2. To keep up with our increasing demand for clothing 120 million trees are logged yearly, 79 billion cubic meters of water is used and a significant volume of greenhouse gasses are emitted Continue reading Can biology save fashion?

What enables some species to regularly rise with the sun and rest with the stars? The biological mechanism for this is believed to be an evolutionary adaptation to the earth’s 24 hour rotation. It is defined as circadian rhythm and found universally in organisms from cyanobacteria to plants and fruit flies. Continue reading Rocking to the TikTok of your internal body clock

What happens when our evolutionary predisposition to be social actually makes us sick? This is the predicament we find ourselves in today, at a scale never seen before. Social distancing has been vital, but the current situation is inherently stressful and will affect our minds and bodies. But how? Continue reading How is the social brain coping with distancing?

We have all seen the pictures of the massive drop in air pollution above China, which is at least partly due to the COVID-19 induced lockdown. China is not alone, as many other countries that are under some form of lockdown have seen decreasing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels. Blue skies are now shining above huge concrete skyscrapers and the world is in awe (1). Continue reading A Living House: Science Fiction or Plausible Future?

After a long night of partying, Ivan* found himself staring at his reflection in the mirror. Still somewhat intoxicated he didn’t fully comprehend what he saw, or rather, what he did not see: Where his own face should have been staring back at him, he saw a large black void, a sphere of darkness in the center of his visual field…. Continue reading High-sight: eyeing unanticipated effects of a ‘harmless’ drug