Numerous protocols have been described that produce neural retina from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), many of which are based on the culture of 3D organoids. While nearly all such methods yield at least partial segments of highly mature-appearing retinal structure, variabilities exist within and between organoids that can change over a protracted time course of differentiation.
Slide of the Week
Christopher Coe, PhD – Slide of the Week
The developing immune system is an adaptive system, primed by antigens, responsive to infectious pathogens, and can be affected by other aspects of the early rearing environment, including deviations from the normal provision of parental care. We investigated whether early rearing in an institutional setting, even when followed by years living in supportive and well-resourced families, would be associated with a persistent shift in T cell profiles.
Viji Easwar, PhD – Slide of the Week
Accurate use of interaural time differences (ITDs) for spatial hearing may require access to bilateral auditory input during sensitive periods in human development. Providing bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) simultaneously promotes symmetrical development of bilateral auditory pathways but does not support normal ITD sensitivity.
Leann Smith DaWalt, PhD – Slide of the Week
Young adults with ASD in the intervention group experienced a reduction in behavior problems over a six month period. There was no change observed for the control group.
Richard Davidson, PhD – Slide of the Week
The ability to understand emotional experiences of others, empathy, is a valuable skill for effective social interactions. Various types of training increase empathy in adolescents, but their impact on brain circuits underlying empathy has not been examined. Video games provide a unique medium familiar and engaging to adolescents and can be used to deliver training at scale.
Randy Ashton, PhD – Slide of the Week
Transplantation of human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived neurons into chick embryos is an established preliminary assay to evaluate engraftment potential. Yet, with recent advances in deriving diverse human neuronal subtypes, optimizing and standardizing such transplantation methodology for specific subtypes at their correlated anatomical sites is still required.
Bradley Christian, PhD – Slide of the Week
Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome; DS) leads to an overproduction of amyloid precursor protein and an increased risk for early Alzheimer’s disease. A study of the natural history of AD-related neuropathology is ongoing to gain an understanding of the distribution and time course of b-amyloid and tau burden in the brains of adults with DS.
Qiang Chang, PhD – Slide of the Week
Astrocytes play an important role in Rett syndrome (RTT) disease progression. Although the non-cell-autonomous effect of RTT astrocytes on neurons was documented, cell-autonomous phenotypes and mechanisms within RTT astrocytes are not well understood. We report that spontaneous calcium activity is abnormal in RTT astrocytes in vitro, in situ, and in vivo.
Murray Brilliant, PhD – Slide of the Week
Defining the full spectrum of human disease associated with a biomarker is necessary to advance the biomarker into clinical practice. We hypothesize that associating biomarker measurements with EHR populations based on shared genetic architectures would establish the clinical epidemiology of the biomarker.
Sriram Boothalingam, PhD – Slide of the Week
The auditory efferent system (ES) originates in the auditory cortex and terminates in the cochlea (inner ear). The activity of the ES has several hypothesized implications for human hearing: facilitating speech understanding in noisy environments, protecting the sensitive inner ear against loud noise, and serving as biological markers of damage in the auditory system.