News archive

Researchers from Karolinska Institutet and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new cell model for human brain helper cells known as astrocytes. The model could potentially be used in large-scale drug screening in the search for treatments for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The research is published in the scientific journal Stem Cell Reports.

A study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Copenhagen published in Nature provides new and important knowledge about how the brain controls locomotion. In research on mice, scientists have discovered that specific start cells in various locations in the brainstem control whether the mouse walks or runs. This research may lead to new treatments for diseases and injuries that adversely affect locomotion.

By reprogramming skin cells into nerve cells, researchers at Karolinska Institutet are creating cell models of the human brain. In a new study published in Molecular Psychiatry the researchers describe how cells from patients with the severe developmental disease lissencephaly differ from healthy cells. The method can provide vital new knowledge on difficult-to-study congenital diseases.

Carmen Fourier, PhD student at the Department of Neuroscience, participated in the "Headache Trainees Excellence Tournament" at the international conference IHC2017 (18th Congress of the International Headache Society) which took place in Vancouver earlier in September this year.

It has long been assumed that chronic nerve pain is caused by hypersensitivity in the neurons that transmit pain. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now show that another kind of neuron that normally allows us to feel pleasant touch sensation, can switch function and instead signal pain after nerve damage. The results, which are presented in the journal Science, can eventually lead to more effective pain treatments.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have made significant progress in the search for new treatments for Parkinson’s disease. By manipulating the gene expression of non-neuronal cells in the brain, they were able to produce new dopamine neurons. The study, performed on mice and human cells, is published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet collaborating in the large-scale Karolinska Schizophrenia Project are taking an integrative approach to unravel the disease mechanisms of schizophrenia. In the very first results now presented in the prestigious scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry, the researchers show that patients with schizophrenia have lower levels of the vital neurotransmitter GABA as well as changes in the brain’s immune cells.

The working memory and other cognitive functions in children and young people can be associated with how successful they are on the football pitch, a new study from Karolinska Institutet shows. Football clubs that focus too much on physical attributes therefore risk overlooking future stars.

An ancient area of the midbrain of all vertebrates called the corpora quadrigemina can independently contol and reorientate the eyes, researchers from Karolinska Institutet report in a study published in the journal eLIFE.

The growth factor IGF-2 can prevent the death of human nerve cells in the incurable disease ALS, according to a study by researchers at Sweden´s Karolinska Institutet and the University of Milan in Italy. The study, which is published in the journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates that degeneration-resistant oculomotor neurons can be used as a tool to identify factors able to prevent the degeneration of vulnerable neurons caused by this deadly disease.

The spinal cord has its own system for sensing changes in pH, according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet. The new findings, which are published in Current Biology, show that cells in the central canal of the spinal cord detect and regulate pH, if it deviates from normal levels. Such changes may in turn impair the function of the neural networks of the nervous system.

Karl Deisseroth is a professor at Stanford, where his group has developed two spectacular scientific techniques – optogenetics and Clarity. He has also been working since 2013 at Karolinska Institutet, which has just invested in a Clarity facility.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet provides insight on how the brain processes external input such as touch, vision or sound from different sources and sides of the body, in order to select and generate adequate movements. The findings, which are presented in the journal Neuron, show that the striatum acts as a sensory ‘hub’ integrating various types of sensory information, with specialised functional roles for the different neuron types.

With the aid of new methods, a research team at Karolinska Institutet have developed a detailed map of the networks of the brain that control the neurotransmitter serotonin. The study, published in the scientific journal Neuron, may lead to new knowledge on a number of psychiatric conditions and the development of new pharmaceuticals.

The European Molecular Biology Organization, EMBO, announced on May 7th that 106 distinguished researchers in the life sciences were newly elected to membership in the organisation.

A study from Karolinska Institutet shows that a new drug for Huntington's disease – pridopidine or dopamine stabiliser ACR16 – might operate via previously unknown mechanisms of action.

A new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet provides evidence that basic human learning systems use areas of the brain that also exist in the most primitive vertebrates, such as certain fish, reptiles and amphibians. The study involved an investigation into the limbic striatum, one of the evolutionarily oldest parts of the brain, and the ability to learn movements, consciously and unconsciously, through repetition.