Monthly Archives: October 2021

Neuroscience

$12.2 million to fund new Conte Center to study neurosteroids Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis – Washington University School of…

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Complements efforts of Taylor Family Institute to develop treatments for psychiatric illness

Steven Mennerick, PhD, works in his laboratory, where he studies neurosteroids and their potential as antidepressants. The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis a $12.2 million grant to create a center aimed at advancing research into neurosteroids as treatments for depression and other psychiatric disorders.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis a five-year, $12.2 million grant to create a center aimed at advancing research into neurosteroids as treatments for depression and other psychiatric disorders.

The new Silvio O. Conte Center for Basic Neuroscience Research will be one of only 15 Conte Centers currently funded by the NIMH, of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The centers research focus complements work performed at Washington Universitys Taylor Family Institute for Innovative Psychiatric Research, where scientists have focused since 2013 on the potential of neuroactive steroids to be used to treat psychiatric problems.

Psychiatric illnesses are a major cause of death and disability in the United States and around the world. Research by scientists at the Taylor Family Institute has added to the understanding of changes in the brain that underlie these disorders. Those researchers also have been involved in developing new treatments using neuroactive steroids.

In addition to tapping psychiatrists, neuroscientists, anesthesiologists and chemists at the School of Medicine, the new Conte Center also will involve researchers at Tufts University, Duke University and the University of Colorado. The overall goal is to identify pathways and receptors in the brain that interact with neuroactive steroids. The idea is that those proteins and receptors then might become treatment targets for new psychiatric drugs developed from neurosteroids.

This will be a discovery-based Conte Center, and we hope to leverage our catalogue of synthetic neurosteroids one of the largest in the world to find more effective treatments for depression and other psychiatric problems, said Steven Mennerick, PhD, co-director of the new center and the John P. Feighner Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University. Our center will unite and coordinate the efforts of internationally recognized investigators with expertise in the biology and chemistry of neurosteroids, as well as expertise in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

The center is organized around three main projects. Alex S. Evers, MD, the Henry E. Mallinckrodt Professor of Anesthesiology, is the principal investigator of a project that aims to identify the cellular proteins targeted by neurosteroids and to characterize the structures of those binding sites.

The second project directed by Mennerick and Charles F. Zorumski, MD, the Samuel B. Guze Professor and head of the Department of Psychiatry will involve testing a prototype antidepressant neurosteroid to help determine what role various types of cellular receptors play as neurosteroids provide antidepressant effects in the brain.

The third project led by Jamie Maguire, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at Tufts University School of Medicine will test the compounds found most effective in the first two projects in animals that exhibit behaviors similar to what would be diagnosed as clinical depression in a person.

We believe there will be a synergy between our efforts to study and develop new treatments at the Taylor Family Institute and our work at the new Conte Center to identify the receptors and pathways through which neurosteroids exert their effect in the brain, said Zorumski, who is a co-director of the new center and director of the Taylor Family Institute. We want to learn which neurosteroids might be most effective as treatments and which receptors those compounds target.

One neuroactive steroid has had some early success treating depression. In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration approved brexanalone as a treatment for postpartum depression; however, the drug can cause significant sleepiness, and it must be delivered via intravenous infusions. The hope is that new treatments will have fewer side effects and be easier to use.

Our work at the Taylor Family Institute and the new Conte Center reflects the unique partnership weve developed in recent years between anesthesiology and psychiatry, Evers said. The drug ketamine is a perfect example. Its best known as an anesthetic, but we now know it also is useful as an antidepressant. Like ketamine, neurosteroids got their start as anesthetics.

Researchers at the Conte Center will have the opportunity to study the effects of hundreds of synthetic neurosteroids developed by Douglas Covey, PhD, the Andrew C. and Barbara B. Taylor Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry. A medicinal chemist, Covey has created a large catalogue of potential candidate compounds.

This work is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Grant number P50 MH122379

Washington University School of Medicines 1,700 faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals. The School of Medicine is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care, consistently ranking among the top medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

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$12.2 million to fund new Conte Center to study neurosteroids Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis - Washington University School of...

Neuroscience

Virus-Based Technique Could Enhance Maps of the Brain – Technology Networks

Virginia Tech scientists have improved upon a key method to map the zebrafish brain -- an advance that could improve understanding of how the human brain functions.

A wiring diagram of the brain would be a powerful tool to understand diseases of connectivity, said Yuchin Albert Pan, the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund Eminent Research Scholar in Developmental Neuroscience at theFralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. Autism spectrum disorder, for example, is characterized by a loss of long-distance connections and increase in local connections. Most neuropsychiatric disorders have connectivity aspects.

Although human brains are more complex, zebrafish brains share a common architecture as do all vertebrates. Determining the structure and function of cells called neurons and how they connect within the brain and between the brain and other structures such as the eye could provide clues to more precisely treat neurological diseases and eye injuries.

In a study in todaysFrontiers in Neuroanatomy, the scientists reported an improved, viral-based technique to trace brain connections between neurons in zebrafish using vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), which labels cells as it spreads across the synaptic connections between neurons that are functionally wired together.

Until now, the use of viral vectors in zebrafish has been limited because the viruses, such as rabies or adeno-associated virus, often used by scientists to transfer molecules to cells in mammals, are not effective in fish.

To overcome this limitation,Virginia Tech scientiststried and validatedtheuseofVSV to trace connection patterns in neurons in zebrafish. The virus was engineered to label excitatory and inhibitory neurons that are connected via a nanoscopic structure called the synapse.

Before this study, the researchers had been successful with the approach, but the improved, second-generation version of the technique used a mutant version of VSV that was less toxic and longer-lived in the cells, making visualization of the connected neurons and the analysis of that connectivity possible up to five days after infection.

This is really exciting, because now we can not only record activity, but we also know something about the cell types involved, and how they connect, said co-lead author Manxiu Michelle Ma, a neurophysiologist and formerly a postdoctoral research associate in the Pan lab. The unique viral tracer benefits from reducedcytotoxicity, which enables the virus-infectedneurons to maintain their cellular integrity and express a fluorescentindicator to reveal neuronalactivity during visual stimulation. Furthermore, this technique can also define the neuron type,for example, if the neuron during a visual stimulus is an excitatory neuron or an inhibitory neuron.

Stanislav Kler, a virologist and co-lead author of the study who was also a postdoctoral research associate in the lab, said, The connectivity patterns between most neuronal types are mostly unknown. This gap in knowledge underscores the critical need for effective neural circuit mapping tools. This will get us a step closer to understanding how the brain stores and processes information and how we can manipulate these circuits for better health.

The research is especially significant for vision research.

To restore vision after diseases or injury that affect the eye itself including the cells in the eye that project to structures deep within the brain for subsequent processing of the visual world, the eye needs to connect to the right places in the brain, said Pan, who is a member of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institutes Center for Neurobiology Research. The small size and translucency of larval zebrafish are a unique experimental system to investigate whole brain neural circuits. Scientists working on vision regeneration can now look at whether there is functional connectivity.

Reference: Kler S, Ma M, Narayan S, Ahrens MB, Pan YA. Cre-Dependent Anterograde Transsynaptic Labeling and Functional Imaging in Zebrafish Using VSV With Reduced Cytotoxicity. Frontiers in Neuroanatomy. 2021;15:71. doi:10.3389/fnana.2021.758350

This article has been republished from materials provided by Virginia Tech. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Virus-Based Technique Could Enhance Maps of the Brain - Technology Networks

Physiology

Dr. Ardem Patapoutian awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Armenian Weekly

(Photo: Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs)

Lebanese-Armenian scientist Ardem Patapoutian is one of the two winners of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of receptors for touch, heat and bodily movement.

Dr. Patapoutian, a professor of neuroscience at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, discovered a new class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs.

He was honored alongside David Julius, a UC San Francisco professor of physiology, who identified a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat.

Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us, the Nobel Assembly wrote in a statement announcing the accolades. The laureates identified critical missing links in our understanding of the complex interplay between our senses and the environment.

Dr. Julius and his team used a key ingredient of chili peppers to identify the gene that makes skin cells capsaicin sensitive. This discovery was a major breakthrough that led the way for scientists to find additional temperature-sensing receptors.

Dr. Patapoutian and his team used a micropipette to poke individual cells and find the sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli such as touch and pressure. In further research, these sensory channels have been shown to regulate physiological processes including blood pressure, respiration and urinary bladder control.

In 1944, Joseph Erlanger and Herbert Gasser received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the different types of sensory nerve fibers that react to distinct stimuli, such as painful touch. While scientists have since proven that people perceive changes in their surroundings through highly specialized neurons, a key question long remained unanswered: how are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system?

This really unlocks one of the secrets of nature, secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly Thomas Perlmann said in announcing the winners. Its actually something that is crucial for our survival, so its a very important and profound discovery.

The pairs findings also have astonishing medical implications, as they are already being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, such as chronic back pain, arthritis and migraines.

Dr. Patapoutian said that his phone was on do not disturb when he received the call from Perlmann, who eventually reached his 92-year-old fathers landline. He then called his son at around 2:30AM California time to deliver the news.

Shortly after, the committee released a photo of a delighted Dr. Patapoutian watching the Nobel Prize press conference from his bed with his son Luca: A day to be thankful, tweeted Dr. Patapoutian. This country gave me a chance with a great education and support for basic research.

Dr. Patapoutian, who was born to an Armenian family in Beirut, Lebanon in 1967, came to the United States in 1986. I fell in love with doing basic research. That changed the trajectory of my career, he said in an interview with the New York Times. In Lebanon, I didnt even know about scientists as a career.

The Nobel Prize laureates will each receive a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.14 million).

Lillian Avedian is a staff writer for the Armenian Weekly. Her writing has also been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hetq and the Daily Californian. She is pursuing masters degrees in Journalism and Near Eastern Studies at New York University. A human rights journalist and feminist poet, Lillian's first poetry collection Journey to Tatev was released with Girls on Key Press in spring of 2021.

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Dr. Ardem Patapoutian awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Armenian Weekly

Physiology

Explained | The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – The Hindu

Does the knowledge of nerve impulses which can perceive temperature and pressure when initiated help to treat pain?

The story so far: The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to David Julius, 66, at the University of California, San Francisco, and Ardem Patapoutian, 54, at Scripps Research, La Jolla, California, for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.

Editorial | Sensing heat: On 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

What is the significance of their work?

The two researchers discovered the molecular mechanism by which our body senses temperature and touch. Being able to do this opens the field for a lot of practical chemistry whereby individual cells and pathways can be tweaked, suppressed or activated to quell pain or sensation. How the body senses external stimuli is among the oldest excursions of natural philosophy. Entire schools of philosophy were based on speculating how the senses influenced the nature of the reality we perceive. Only when physiology developed as an independent discipline and anatomy came into its own did it become widely accepted that specific sensations were the result of different categories of nerves getting stimulated. Thus, a caress or a punch induces cells in our bodies to react differently and convert into specific patterns of electrical stimulation that is then conveyed via the nerves to the central nervous system. Since the Nobel Prizes came to be, at least three of them were for establishing key principles for how sensations travelled along skin and muscle sensory nerve fibres. Much like the length, thickness, material and incident force on their strings elicit specific tones out of a guitar or a piano, there are specific nerve fibre types that in tandem create a response to touch, heat and proprioception, or the sense of our bodys movement and position in space. However, the prominence of molecular biology means that physiology wanted to go a level deeper and find out what specific proteins and which genes are responsible in this symphony of the nerves.

What is the contribution of David Julius towards this?

Capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide), the active component of chili peppers, generates the burning sensation when eating spicy food. Studies on capsaicin showed that when it acted on sensory nerves it induced ionic currents, or the gush of charged particles along a membrane. In the late 1990s, Professor Julius pursued a project to identify a nerve receptor for capsaicin. He thought that understanding the action of capsaicin could provide insights into how the body sensed pain. He and his team went about this by looking for a gene that could induce a response to capsaicin in cells that usually wouldnt react to it. They found one in a novel ion channel protein, later called TRPV1, where TRP stands for transient receptor potential, and VR1 is vanilloid receptor1. They were part of a super family of TRP and it was found that TRPV1 was activated when temperatures were greater than 40 degrees Celsius, which is close to the bodys pain threshold. Several other TRP channels were found, and this ion channel could be activated by various chemical substances, as well as by cold and heat in a way that differs between mammalian species.

What did Ardem Patapoutian find?

Growing up in Beirut as an Armenian, during the Lebanese Civil War, Patapoutian has related stories of being captured by militants at university, before he moved to the United States. Patapoutian and his colleagues were working on how pressure and force affected cells. Following an approach similar to that of Professor Julius, they identified 72 potential genes that could encode an ion channel receptor and trigger sensitivity to mechanical force, and it emerged that one of them coded for a novel ion channel protein, called Piezo1. Via Piezo1, a second gene was discovered and named Piezo2. Sensory neurons were found to express high levels of Piezo2 and further studies firmly established that Piezo1 and Piezo2 are ion channels that are directly activated by the exertion of pressure on cell membranes. The breakthrough by Professor Patapoutian led to a series of papers from his and other groups, demonstrating that the Piezo2 ion channel is essential for the sense of touch. Moreover, Piezo2 was shown to play a key role in proprioception as well as regulate blood pressure, respiration and urinary bladder control. Independently of one another, Professor Julius and Professor Patapoutian used the chemical substance menthol to identify TRPM8, a receptor activated by cold.

What applications do these discoveries have?

Along with the discoveries of specific genes, proteins and pathways, the scientists pioneered experimental methods that allow insight into the structure of these pain and temperature sensors. The challenge for pain relieving drugs is to precisely target regions without causing imbalance in other necessary functions. These scientists work, the Nobel Prize committee said, significantly helped towards reaching that goal.

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Explained | The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - The Hindu

Physiology

The Nobel Prize in Medicine recognized research on temperature and touch. – The New York Times

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly on Monday to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, two scientists who independently discovered key mechanisms of how people sense heat, cold, touch and their own bodily movements.

Dr. Julius, a professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, used a key ingredient in hot chili peppers to identify a protein in nerve cells that responds to uncomfortably hot temperatures.

Dr. Patapoutian, a molecular biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., led a team that, by poking individual cells with a tiny pipette, hit upon a receptor that responds to pressure, touch and the positioning of body parts.

After Dr. Juliuss pivotal discovery of a heat-sensing protein in 1997, pharmaceutical companies poured billions of dollars into looking for nonopioid drugs that could dull pain by targeting the receptors. But while research is ongoing, the related treatments have so far run into huge obstacles, scientists said, and interest from drug makers has largely dried up.

Pain and pressure were among the last frontiers of scientists efforts to describe the molecular basis for sensations. The 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine was given to work clarifying how smell worked. As far back as 1967, the prize was awarded to scientists studying vision.

But unlike smell and sight, the perceptions of pain or touch are not located in an isolated part of the body, and scientists did not even know what molecules to look for. Its been the last main sensory system to fall to molecular analysis, Dr. Julius said at an online briefing on Monday.

The biggest hurdle in Dr. Juliuss work was how to comb through a library of millions of DNA fragments encoding different proteins in the sensory neurons to find the one that reacts to capsaicin, the key component in chili peppers. The solution was to introduce those genes into cells that do not normally respond to capsaicin until one was discovered that made the cells capable of reacting.

In search of the molecular basis for touch, Dr. Patapoutian, too, had to sift through a number of possible genes. One by one, he and his collaborators inactivated genes until they identified the single one that, when disabled, made the cells insensitive to the poke of a tiny pipette.

Dr. Patapoutian said that he gravitated to studying the sense of touch and pain because those systems remained so mysterious. When you find a field thats not well understood, he said, its a great opportunity to dig in.

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The Nobel Prize in Medicine recognized research on temperature and touch. - The New York Times

Physiology

New Nobelist David Julius was a standout from the start – University of California

David Julius, one of todays winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was a standout even as a graduate student at UC Berkeley in the 1970s and 80s, according to one of his mentors, 2013 Nobel laureate Randy Schekman.

Among our most talented Ph.D. students over many decades, David stands out for his originality, focus and determination, said Schekman, a Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology, adding that, Unlike many people of his level of accomplishment, David is personally sweet and charming and generous in his treatment of others.

Julius, now professor and chair of the Department of Physiology at UC San Francisco and the Morris Herzstein Chair in Molecular Biology and Medicine, shared the prize with Ardem Patapoutian, professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Scripps Research and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch, according to the Nobel Committee 2021in Stockholm, Sweden.

Research on receptors for touch and temperature could lead to better pain killers and, potentially, new treatments for chronic pain. One of Juliuss former postdoctoral students, Diana Bautista, a Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, has extended this work to look in detail at itch, which is common in such disorders as eczema, and at the impact of chronic inflammation, in general, on the nervous and immune systems.

David is an incredible scientist and mentor, Bautista said. He mentored many students and postdocs and trained us how to approach science using unbiased approaches, to ask the tough questions, and to give back to the scientific community. I am so lucky to have worked with him and am thrilled he received this well-deserved honor.

Julius came to Berkeley in 1977 after graduating from MIT with a B.S. in life sciences and worked with both Schekman and Jeremy Thorner, now a professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology. His thesis focused on the mechanisms of peptide hormone processing and secretion in yeast,Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Schekmans 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was for work on the secretion process in yeast.

Thorner, with whom Julius primarily worked, is well known for his studies of transmembrane and intracellular signal transduction mechanisms, especially the understanding of how extracellular stimuli control cell growth and division, cell morphology and gene expression work at the biochemical level.

I am just delighted and proud of all that David has accomplished, Thorner said.

According to Schekman, Julius was the first to clone a gene responsible for endoproteolytic cleavage of a pro-hormone precursor, a gene that became the prototype for other proteases that are responsible for processing human hormones, including proinsulin.

After leaving Berkeley in 1984 for a postdoctoral position at Columbia University, Julius cloned the serotonin receptor gene a multi-year struggle, but he eventually succeeded with results that matched his brilliant Ph.D work, Schekman said.

Julius work on serotonin receptors led, after his move to UCSF in 1989, to a focus on the receptors for touch and pain. He subsequently discovered temperature-sensitive ion channel receptors so-called transient receptor potential (TRP), or trip, channels that enable sensory nerve fibers to detect hot or cold temperatures.

Davids work is never derivative, said Allan Basbaum, a frequent scientific collaborator with Julius and the chair of UCSFs Department of Anatomy. Its always groundbreaking, seminal.

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New Nobelist David Julius was a standout from the start - University of California

Physiology

Nobel Prize winners 2021: Here’s the complete list of awardees and their contributions – Republic World

Every year in October, the Nobel Committee recognises and awards individualsor organisations for their contributions in specific fields. Fields considered for the awards includephysiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, literature, peace work, and economic science.

The Nobel Prize is given to people who "have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind" bya foundation established by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel inhis will, read in Stockholm on 30 December 1896.

The Nobel Prizes and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel have been awarded 609 times to 975 people and organisations between the years 1901 and 2021. Atotal of 943 individuals and 25 organisationsare awarded as some have receivedthe Nobel Prize more than once.

Nobel Peace Prize 2021

Maria Ressa continues to expose abuse of power, use of violence, and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines by using freedom of expression. On the other hand, for several decades, Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov has defended freedom of speechin Russia amid challenging conditions.

Nobel Prize in Literature 2021

Gurnah is known for hisnovels and a number of short stories that arethemed around the disruption of refugees

Nobel Prize in Physics 2021

Syukuro Manabe,thefirst person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and the vertical transport of air masses,discovered theories to help makeclimate models that assist in detecting weather patterns.

Klaus Hasselmann's methods have proven that global warming is a result of human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, andGiorgio Parisi'sdiscoveries makemany different and apparently entirely random phenomena understandable. Their application is not only limited to physics and extends toother fieldsincludingmathematics, biology, neuroscience, and machine learning.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021

List and MacMillan have been recognised for their contribution in making molecular construction easier by inventing a tool that helps in catalysis for producing asymmetric molecules.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2021

Julius and Patapotian's breakthrough discoveries launched intense research activities leading to a rapid increase in the understanding of how the humannervous system senses heat, cold, and mechanical stimuli.

Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences

The three laureates havenew insights about the labour market and have shown what conclusions about cause and effect can be drawn from natural experiments. Their approach has spread to other fields and has revolutionised empirical research.

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Nobel Prize winners 2021: Here's the complete list of awardees and their contributions - Republic World

Physiology

Charter to establish clinical exercise physiology as a recognised allied health profession in the UK: a call to action – DocWire News

This article was originally published here

BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med. 2021 Sep 21;7(3):e001158. doi: 10.1136/bmjsem-2021-001158. eCollection 2021.

ABSTRACT

The UK population is growing, ageing and becoming increasingly inactive and unfit. Personalised and targeted exercise interventions are beneficial for ageing and the management of chronic and complex conditions. Increasing the uptake of effective exercise and physical activity (PA) interventions is vital to support a healthier society and decrease healthcare costs. Current strategies for exercise and PA at a population level mostly involve self-directed exercise pathways, delivered largely via the fitness industry. Even for those who opt-in and manage to achieve the current recommendations regarding minimum PA, this generic one-size-fits-all approach often fails to demonstrate meaningful physiological and health benefits. Personalised exercise prescription and appropriate exercise testing, monitoring and progression of interventions for individuals with chronic disease should be provided by appropriately trained and recognised exercise healthcare professionals, educated in the cognate disciplines of exercise science (eg, physiology, biomechanics, motor control, psychology). This workforce has operated for >20 years in the Australian public and private healthcare systems. Accredited exercise physiologists (AEPs) are recognised allied health professionals, with demonstrable health and economic benefits. AEPs have knowledge of the risks and benefits of distinct forms of exercise, skills in the personalised prescription and optimal delivery of exercise, and competencies to support sustained PA behavioural change, based on the established scientific evidence. In this charter, we propose a road map for the training, accreditation and promotion of a clinical exercise physiology profession in the UK.

PMID:34631147 | PMC:PMC8458347 | DOI:10.1136/bmjsem-2021-001158

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Charter to establish clinical exercise physiology as a recognised allied health profession in the UK: a call to action - DocWire News

Physiology

Jeff Ramirez to be Inducted into American Academy of Nursing – gonzaga.edu

SPOKANE, Wash. Jeffery Ramirez, Ph.D., a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a professor of nursing in the School of Nursing and Human Physiology at Gonzaga University, has been selected to become a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Professor Ramirez and the other 2021 inductees will be recognized for their significant contributions to health care at the Academys annual Health Policy Conference, Oct. 7-9. This years conference and induction ceremony is offered in a hybrid format, allowing attendees to participate in-person (at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C.) or virtually, allowing for maximum attendance through an inclusive format where colleagues, friends, and family members who may not be able to attend the event in person are able to participate. This years induction ceremony will feature personalized video vignettes and live streaming of each inductee.

Induction into the Academy is a significant milestone in a nurse leaders career in which their accomplishments are honored by their colleagues within and outside the profession. Fellows are selected based on their contributions and impact to advance the publics health.

The Academy is an honor society that recognizes nursings most accomplished leaders in policy, research, practice, administration, and academia. Academy Fellows, from nearly 40 countries, hold a wide variety of roles influencing health care. Induction into the Fellowship represents more than recognition of ones accomplishments within the nursing profession. Fellows contribute their collective expertise to the Academy, engaging with health leaders nationally and globally to improve health and achieve health equity by impacting policy through nursing leadership, innovation, and science.

Through a competitive, rigorous application process, the Academys Fellow Selection Committee reviewed hundreds of applications to select the 2021 Fellows. Ramirez was one of 225 individuals selected to be inducted into the 2021 class, which represents 38 states, the District of Columbia, and 18 countries.

Ramirez also was inducted as a Fellow in the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (FAANP) in 2019 and a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academies of Practice in 2020. He is the first nurse practitioner faculty member from Gonzaga to receive these honors.

Dr. Ramirez has held hospital leadership positions as a Nurse Manager, Clinical Nurse Specialist, and Director of Quality Management. He shared his clinical expertise in psychiatric nursing by consulting throughout the country advocating for system changes to improve the care and treatment of psychiatric hospitalized patients. He has been an invited speaker at the local, state, and national level. He has served on expert nursing panels, state and national nursing professional organization boards.

Professor Ramirez is a recognized leader in psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP) education and has educated PMHNPs to serve in rural and underserved communities in multiple states. He has held educational leadership positions including as lead faculty for the PMHNP program, chairperson for the nursing department and program director for the Doctor of Practice.

I am honored to be chosen to this distinguished and respected academy, Ramirez said. This is certainly one of the greatest recognitions a nursing scholar can receive. I am looking forward to joining this esteemed group of nursing leaders and carrying out the mission of the American Academy of Nursing and improving health through leadership and innovations.

For more information, please contact Professor Ramirez at (509) 313-6484.

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Jeff Ramirez to be Inducted into American Academy of Nursing - gonzaga.edu

Physiology

Busted body clocks mess with fight or flight response – Futurity: Research News

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New research in mice digs into how the bodys internal clocks manage release of important hormones.

For humans and animals, many aspects of normal behavior and physiology rely on the proper functioning of the bodys circadian clocks.

for a normal hormone rhythm to proceed, you need clocks in both the central pacemaker and this downstream region to work in tandem.

Heres how its supposed to work: Your brain sends signals to your body to release different hormones at certain times of the day. For example, you get a boost of the hormone cortisolnatures built-in alarm systemright before you usually wake up.

But hormone release actually relies on the interconnected activity of clocks in more than one part of the brain.

The new research shows how daily release of glucocorticoids depends on coordinated clock-gene and neuronal activity rhythms in neurons found in two parts of the hypothalamus, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and paraventricular nucleus (PVN).

The new study, conducted with freely behaving mice, appears in Nature Communications.

Normal behavior and physiology depends on a near 24-hour circadian release of various hormones, says Jeff Jones, who led the study as a postdoctoral research scholar in biology atWashington University in St. Louis and recently started work as an assistant professor of biology at Texas A&M University.

When hormone release is disrupted, it can lead to numerous pathologies, including affective disorders like anxiety and depression and metabolic disorders like diabetes and obesity.

We wanted to understand how signals from the central biological clocka tiny brain area called the SCNare decoded by the rest of the brain to generate these diverse circadian rhythms in hormone release, says Jones, who worked with Erik Herzog, a professor at Washington University and senior author of the new study.

The daily timing of hormone release is controlled by the SCN. Located in the hypothalamus, just above where the optic nerves cross, neurons in the SCN send daily signals that are decoded in other parts of the brain that talk to the adrenal glands and the bodys endocrine system.

Cortisol in humans (corticosterone in mice) is more typically known as a stress hormone involved in the fight or flight response, Jones says. But the stress of waking up and preparing for the day is one of the biggest regular stressors to the body. Having a huge amount of this glucocorticoid released right as you wake up seems to help you gear up for the day.

Or for the night, if youre a mouse.

The same hormones that help humans prepare for dealing with the morning commute or a challenging work day also help mice meet their nightly step goals on the running wheel.

Using a novel neuronal recording approach, Jones and Herzog recorded brain activity in individual mice for up to two weeks at a time.

Recording activity from identified types of neurons for such a long period of time is difficult and data intensive, Herzog says. Jeff pioneered these methods for long-term, real-time observations in behaving animals.

Using information about each mouses daily rest-activity and corticosterone secretion, along with gene expression and electrical activity of targeted neurons in their brains, the scientists discovered a critical circuit between the SCN and neurons in the PVN that produce the hormone that triggers release of glucocorticoids.

Turns out, its not enough for the neurons in the SCN to send out daily signals; the local clock in the PVN neurons also has to be working properly in order to produce coordinated daily rhythms in hormone release.

Experiments that eliminated a clock gene in the circadian-signal-receiving area of the brain broke the regular daily cycle.

Theres certain groups of neurons in the SCN that communicate timing information to groups of neurons in the PVN that regulate daily hormone release, Jones says. And for a normal hormone rhythm to proceed, you need clocks in both the central pacemaker and this downstream region to work in tandem.

The findings in mice could have implications for humans down the road, Jones says. Future therapies for cortisol-related diseases and genetic conditions in humans will need to take into account the importance of a second internal clock.

Source: Washington University in St. Louis

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Busted body clocks mess with fight or flight response - Futurity: Research News