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This study finds that reducing the amount of slow-wave sleep results in worse performance on a subsequent memory test and reduced encoding-related hippocampal fMRI activation. This happens even though the total amount of sleep was unaffected, suggesting that hippocampus-dependent memory is particularly affected by shallow sleep.
The authors use chronic in vivo imaging to study pyramidal neurons before and after deletion of the tumor suppressor gene Pten in mature neurons of the mouse cortex. They find that Pten/mTOR signaling only regulates growth of layer 2/3 apical dendrites.
ProBDNF can have drastic effects on synaptic function that are quite different from those of mature BDNF. It is, however, controversial whether proBDNF is ever released in amounts that are sufficient to affect normal synaptic plasticity. Here, Yang and colleagues have detected the release of proBDNF from hippocampal neurons using newly developed knock-in mice and antibodies.
Cheng and colleagues propose a mechanism for amyloid-β toxicity that may have relevance for Alzheimer's disease. They show that Aβ1–42 induces expression of collagen VI and that collagen VI protects against Aβ toxicity in cultured neurons.
