Topic: gliosis

Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) affect the gastrointestinal tract and can lead to extra-gut effects, including depression and anxiety related to the brain. Specifically, certain brain regions, such as the hippocampus, respond to bowel inflammation by modulating neuronal and glial activity. During the peak of inflammation, hippocampal regions undergo changes in glial properties that are associated with alterations in excitatory synaptic transmission. Additionally, bowel inflammation compromises the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, leading to the infiltration of immune cells and metabolit

To understand the human brain and its neurodegenerative diseases, as well as to develop appropriate treatments, we need to investigate human tissue. Human organotypic culture provides an excellent opportunity to examine cellular and network-level activities, as well as molecular changes at long-term, as this technique enables the maintenance of the brain tissue for several weeks with a preserved tissue structure and cellular connections. However, due to the slice preparation and culture technique, considerable changes occur in the cultured tissue. In this study, we explored neuronal degenerati

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder known for thirty years to be caused by an aberrant expansion of CAG repeats in the HTT gene. Still, no specific biomarkers are routinely applied in the clinical management of patients. The retina is the most accessible area of the CNS system that enables noninvasive monitoring of HD mutation carriers, but we need first to determine how retinal alterations correlate with those of inner brain areas. To this aim, we analyzed the transgenic R6/1 and the knockin zQ175 mouse strains using optical coherence tomography (OCT), gene express