Posts Tagged ‘University of Toronto research’
From the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, there has been a series of extreme light changes in a nearby brown dwarf (a star of mass so great that can be considered a normal planet, but that is less than that required becoming a star).
All indications are that these extreme changes in brightness indicate a storm of magnitude never before seen on a planet. For a detailed scan of the sky in search of nearby brown dwarfs, a team led by astronomers at the University of Toronto, Canada, captured a unique infrared images from the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Read the rest of this entry »
The therapy for depression may have a new ally. A team of scientists from the University of Toronto in Canada have discovered that blocking a couple of brain receptors for dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in the disease, could serve as a target for drugs to combat depression. This was highlighted in an article published in the journal Nature Medicine.
Scientists have known that people with depression have impaired dopamine. Sensitized brain cells to dopamine through five different molecular receptors, D1-D5, and different receptors can cause molecular changes in brain cells when activated. These neurotransmitters typically work alone, but recent research has found that the combination of dopamine receptors can bind and produce signals different from those of the individual receivers.
Toronto researchers, led by Fang Liu, show that direct interaction between two different types of dopamine receptors, D1 and D2, is present at higher levels in brain regions involved in reward of depressed patients, compared with those of healthy people. Read the rest of this entry »