your brain is an amazing organ it’s home
to one of the most fascinating type of
cells neurons neurons form vast networks
of connections which work together to
control the human body an incredibly
form consciousness how does the brain
form these networks and connections well
today I’m gonna take you on a journey
inside of a neuron and show you how one
particular protein is involved in neuron
function and development this protein is
called B D and F or brain derived
neurotrophic factor it’s part of a
family of proteins called neurotrophins
our neuro trophic factors also included
in this family is nerve growth factor or
ng F the first neurotrophins covered in
this family BDNF is involved in many
neurological functions such as neuron
development neuron survival and synaptic
plasticity so for BD enough to perform
its functions it must first be released
at the synapse and this is very similar
to a neurotransmitter being released
it’s released from a vesicle into the
synaptic cleft and as you can see this
is a post synapse and a pre synapse and
as the growth factor is released it has
to bind to a receptor now BDNF can bind
to two different types of receptors
first is the trek b receptor and the
second is the p75 receptor now upon
binding this produces very different
effects on the nervous system in which
trek B is responsible for neuron growth
and survival and plasticity
however the P 75 receptor is involved in
processes like apoptosis or programmed
cell death now you may ask why would the
nervous system want to kill off nerves
or neurons and that’s because for
instance during development you begin
with mourner
you could ever need and you must prune
off the unwanted or unneeded neurons
interestingly the truck B receptor is
involved in survival of developmental
neurons so for instance as neurons are
migrating the ones that will reach their
innervation points first will receive
their trek B innervation from B D and F
and they will survive so you can kind of
get an idea of how these different
binding of these different receptors
leads to very different effects on the
nervous system now I want to take a step
back from molecular biology for a second
and I would like you all to sometime
perform this exercise now neurons are
beautiful and they have these incredible
dendritic arborizations and an
arborisation means a tree like branch so
especially in our northern climates we
have these trees without their leaves
and if you go into the woods you can get
an incredible representation of what it
would be like to stand inside the brain
and little use of your imagination and
in this case a help from Photoshop I
turned this tree into what I see
underneath the microscope and if you
compare it to this image here this is an
upper Kinji fiber located in the
cerebellum a structure on the back of
your brain and these neurons have some
of the most robust dendritic
arborizations they’re absolutely
beautiful now neurotrophins for instance
are involved in the development of these
arborizations and dendrites specifically
dendritic spines so you can see from
this image these little spines that are
coming off the dendrites are the
location of synaptic formation so the
connections between neurons
that’s where neurotransmitters are
signaled and neurons can communicate and
BDNF is involved in the formation of
these dendritic spines they kind of
resemble mushrooms and what really is
happening here
as a neuron fires and communicates it
will then release BDNF back and forth
and interestingly beating F can be
transported either backwards from the
post snaps to the previous naps called a
retrograde signaling or anterograde
similar to a neurotransmitter from the
pre-snap to the postsynaptic saying hey
bro I received your signal let’s uh hang
out and uh you know can continue to
communicate and form a better
relationship and as this happens it
strengthens these connections and not
only does it begin to strengthen just
the synapse it starts to form circuits
and networks and this is the foundation
of learning and memory so as you can see
beating athis is crucial to the
development and function and maintenance
of the nervous system now you may have
heard things like exercise is good for
the brain well why is it good for the
brain I mean it is good for a number of
reasons
but for one reason is that it can up
regulate and maintain levels of
neurotrophins such as B D and F so
therefore it can enhance your ability to
learn and have a healthy functioning
nervous system and this brings me to my
next point
because BDNF is so important to neural
function in the healthy nervous system
it is also involved in disease pathology
so in diseases like major depressive
disorder or just depression stress is
related to decreased neural activity and
formation of synaptic connections and
therefore antidepressants can help
restore you know maybe BDNF levels and
there this is a theory behind this that
exercise and antidepressants can help
restore BDNF levels and therefore
enhance neural activity and synaptic
plasticity and diseases like
schizophrenia there’s also a correlation
to abnormal expression levels of this
now I want to talk about one disease and
specifically and that’s Huntington’s
disease Huntington’s is a movement
disorder it is a autosomal dominant
disease that leads to the death of
neurons in an area of the brain called
the striatum it’s located in the basal
ganglia and it’s involved in
coordination of movement now the
huntingtin protein itself is involved in
absolutely incredible cellular function
called axonal transport and what I
didn’t talk about earlier when I was
explaining how BDNF bind so it’s a track
B receptor those signals are like a
relay and there’s a passing of molecules
down that leads to transcription of new
genes and for new genes to be made that
has to be activated by DNA located in
the nucleus and in neurons that nucleus
is or cell body in soma is located very
far away from the synaptic terminals so
we have these amazing motor proteins
called dining and kinesin and they
literally walk along the lengths of the
axon carrying cargo and as you can see
in this illustration here those are the
vesicles and the yellow proteins are the
motor proteins so as B D and F is bound
to its receptor it’s endocytosed in
these vesicles and traffic all the way
back to the nucleus now that Huntington
protein is involved in these motor
proteins and it in Huntington’s it is
mutated and therefore it renders it
dysfunctional and actual transport
becomes aberrant therefore these
neurotrophins aport signals are
disrupted leading to death in these
neurons now this brings me to my
research so here at Northern Michigan
University our research lab supervised
by dr. Eric autumn researches the
relationship between muscle synthesize
brain derived neurotrophic factor
and its relationship to motor neurons so
yes BDNF is not only synthesized in
neurons it is also made in the muscle
tissue and we are trying to elucidate if
there’s an involvement between neuro
trophic signaling retrograde axonal
transport so the motor proteins carrying
information from our vesicles from the
dendrites back to the nucleus and
diseases like spinal Balder muscular
atrophy and amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis or ALS ALS is a motor neuron
disease it is the disease that Stephen
Hawking the famed theoretical physicists
who recently passed away suffered from
the majority of his life in his
wheelchair is an absolutely debilitating
disease and we really do not understand
this disease very well at all there are
no treatments that can prolong life at
this point and the interesting thing is
90% of its spontaneous so there are
cellular mechanisms that are going wrong
and our research lab is trying to
so before we go today I want to share
one message with you and that’s why I
think having a greater understanding of
neural function is very important now
aside from neuroscience I have one other
passion and that’s playing guitar I’m an
absolute guitar fanatic and my advisor
will tell you that I have a guitar
problem and I don’t think it’s a problem
unless I’m trying to meet a deadline
like finish my thesis on time however I
do have a problem as a guitarist and
that’s because I didn’t learn music at a
young age and as I began to play guitar
I was bad I was absolutely horrible and
I probably drove everybody nuts because
I had no foundation of rhythm and timing
or any understanding of melodic and
harmonic relationships in over the years
I got a little bit better
I suddenly realized to be a good or
great guitar player you
first have to be a great musician and in
grad school so around like five six
years ago I was able to take a few music
courses specifically sight singing an
auditory training and this is a course
where you learn how to not only
understand timing and rhythm you sing
sheet music and you understand the
foundations of harmony and melody and
pick up how to understand intervals of
music I didn’t think I was going to be
able to become very good at this and it
was really hard it was honestly one of
the hardest classes I ever took in grad
school even on top of these neuroscience
and advanced molecular biology courses
it is incredibly hard to be able to hear
different pitches of music and tell you
the intervals like a perfect fifth or a
major third and it was during this time
where I was studying neuroscience so I
was studying these neurotrophins and how
neural networks are formed and finally
at one point I realized that oh my gosh
I’m making progress
I’m also understanding how the brain
learns information how it actually
functions and this information together
helped me begin to make progress because
I started to realize how I learned the
best and as students you may have heard
this before you need to learn how you
learn the best and it is intuitive
however it’s also hard because sometimes
it doesn’t seem like you’re making any
progress
but if you understand how these networks
are forming how neural signaling works
and how synapses are strengthening and
forming new networks it can be extremely
beneficial for your progress and I look
at it as you are expanding these neural
networks and it can take a long time and
a lot of hard work but eventually you’re
able to tap into them and as you tap
into them in a way you’re able to
increase your perception of reality and
your cognitive enhancement I truly feel
that a greater awareness
an understanding of brain function can
be a powerful tool to help you succeed
at great things thank you [Applause]
to one of the most fascinating type of
cells neurons neurons form vast networks
of connections which work together to
control the human body an incredibly
form consciousness how does the brain
form these networks and connections well
today I’m gonna take you on a journey
inside of a neuron and show you how one
particular protein is involved in neuron
function and development this protein is
called B D and F or brain derived
neurotrophic factor it’s part of a
family of proteins called neurotrophins
our neuro trophic factors also included
in this family is nerve growth factor or
ng F the first neurotrophins covered in
this family BDNF is involved in many
neurological functions such as neuron
development neuron survival and synaptic
plasticity so for BD enough to perform
its functions it must first be released
at the synapse and this is very similar
to a neurotransmitter being released
it’s released from a vesicle into the
synaptic cleft and as you can see this
is a post synapse and a pre synapse and
as the growth factor is released it has
to bind to a receptor now BDNF can bind
to two different types of receptors
first is the trek b receptor and the
second is the p75 receptor now upon
binding this produces very different
effects on the nervous system in which
trek B is responsible for neuron growth
and survival and plasticity
however the P 75 receptor is involved in
processes like apoptosis or programmed
cell death now you may ask why would the
nervous system want to kill off nerves
or neurons and that’s because for
instance during development you begin
with mourner
you could ever need and you must prune
off the unwanted or unneeded neurons
interestingly the truck B receptor is
involved in survival of developmental
neurons so for instance as neurons are
migrating the ones that will reach their
innervation points first will receive
their trek B innervation from B D and F
and they will survive so you can kind of
get an idea of how these different
binding of these different receptors
leads to very different effects on the
nervous system now I want to take a step
back from molecular biology for a second
and I would like you all to sometime
perform this exercise now neurons are
beautiful and they have these incredible
dendritic arborizations and an
arborisation means a tree like branch so
especially in our northern climates we
have these trees without their leaves
and if you go into the woods you can get
an incredible representation of what it
would be like to stand inside the brain
and little use of your imagination and
in this case a help from Photoshop I
turned this tree into what I see
underneath the microscope and if you
compare it to this image here this is an
upper Kinji fiber located in the
cerebellum a structure on the back of
your brain and these neurons have some
of the most robust dendritic
arborizations they’re absolutely
beautiful now neurotrophins for instance
are involved in the development of these
arborizations and dendrites specifically
dendritic spines so you can see from
this image these little spines that are
coming off the dendrites are the
location of synaptic formation so the
connections between neurons
that’s where neurotransmitters are
signaled and neurons can communicate and
BDNF is involved in the formation of
these dendritic spines they kind of
resemble mushrooms and what really is
happening here
as a neuron fires and communicates it
will then release BDNF back and forth
and interestingly beating F can be
transported either backwards from the
post snaps to the previous naps called a
retrograde signaling or anterograde
similar to a neurotransmitter from the
pre-snap to the postsynaptic saying hey
bro I received your signal let’s uh hang
out and uh you know can continue to
communicate and form a better
relationship and as this happens it
strengthens these connections and not
only does it begin to strengthen just
the synapse it starts to form circuits
and networks and this is the foundation
of learning and memory so as you can see
beating athis is crucial to the
development and function and maintenance
of the nervous system now you may have
heard things like exercise is good for
the brain well why is it good for the
brain I mean it is good for a number of
reasons
but for one reason is that it can up
regulate and maintain levels of
neurotrophins such as B D and F so
therefore it can enhance your ability to
learn and have a healthy functioning
nervous system and this brings me to my
next point
because BDNF is so important to neural
function in the healthy nervous system
it is also involved in disease pathology
so in diseases like major depressive
disorder or just depression stress is
related to decreased neural activity and
formation of synaptic connections and
therefore antidepressants can help
restore you know maybe BDNF levels and
there this is a theory behind this that
exercise and antidepressants can help
restore BDNF levels and therefore
enhance neural activity and synaptic
plasticity and diseases like
schizophrenia there’s also a correlation
to abnormal expression levels of this
now I want to talk about one disease and
specifically and that’s Huntington’s
disease Huntington’s is a movement
disorder it is a autosomal dominant
disease that leads to the death of
neurons in an area of the brain called
the striatum it’s located in the basal
ganglia and it’s involved in
coordination of movement now the
huntingtin protein itself is involved in
absolutely incredible cellular function
called axonal transport and what I
didn’t talk about earlier when I was
explaining how BDNF bind so it’s a track
B receptor those signals are like a
relay and there’s a passing of molecules
down that leads to transcription of new
genes and for new genes to be made that
has to be activated by DNA located in
the nucleus and in neurons that nucleus
is or cell body in soma is located very
far away from the synaptic terminals so
we have these amazing motor proteins
called dining and kinesin and they
literally walk along the lengths of the
axon carrying cargo and as you can see
in this illustration here those are the
vesicles and the yellow proteins are the
motor proteins so as B D and F is bound
to its receptor it’s endocytosed in
these vesicles and traffic all the way
back to the nucleus now that Huntington
protein is involved in these motor
proteins and it in Huntington’s it is
mutated and therefore it renders it
dysfunctional and actual transport
becomes aberrant therefore these
neurotrophins aport signals are
disrupted leading to death in these
neurons now this brings me to my
research so here at Northern Michigan
University our research lab supervised
by dr. Eric autumn researches the
relationship between muscle synthesize
brain derived neurotrophic factor
and its relationship to motor neurons so
yes BDNF is not only synthesized in
neurons it is also made in the muscle
tissue and we are trying to elucidate if
there’s an involvement between neuro
trophic signaling retrograde axonal
transport so the motor proteins carrying
information from our vesicles from the
dendrites back to the nucleus and
diseases like spinal Balder muscular
atrophy and amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis or ALS ALS is a motor neuron
disease it is the disease that Stephen
Hawking the famed theoretical physicists
who recently passed away suffered from
the majority of his life in his
wheelchair is an absolutely debilitating
disease and we really do not understand
this disease very well at all there are
no treatments that can prolong life at
this point and the interesting thing is
90% of its spontaneous so there are
cellular mechanisms that are going wrong
and our research lab is trying to
so before we go today I want to share
one message with you and that’s why I
think having a greater understanding of
neural function is very important now
aside from neuroscience I have one other
passion and that’s playing guitar I’m an
absolute guitar fanatic and my advisor
will tell you that I have a guitar
problem and I don’t think it’s a problem
unless I’m trying to meet a deadline
like finish my thesis on time however I
do have a problem as a guitarist and
that’s because I didn’t learn music at a
young age and as I began to play guitar
I was bad I was absolutely horrible and
I probably drove everybody nuts because
I had no foundation of rhythm and timing
or any understanding of melodic and
harmonic relationships in over the years
I got a little bit better
I suddenly realized to be a good or
great guitar player you
first have to be a great musician and in
grad school so around like five six
years ago I was able to take a few music
courses specifically sight singing an
auditory training and this is a course
where you learn how to not only
understand timing and rhythm you sing
sheet music and you understand the
foundations of harmony and melody and
pick up how to understand intervals of
music I didn’t think I was going to be
able to become very good at this and it
was really hard it was honestly one of
the hardest classes I ever took in grad
school even on top of these neuroscience
and advanced molecular biology courses
it is incredibly hard to be able to hear
different pitches of music and tell you
the intervals like a perfect fifth or a
major third and it was during this time
where I was studying neuroscience so I
was studying these neurotrophins and how
neural networks are formed and finally
at one point I realized that oh my gosh
I’m making progress
I’m also understanding how the brain
learns information how it actually
functions and this information together
helped me begin to make progress because
I started to realize how I learned the
best and as students you may have heard
this before you need to learn how you
learn the best and it is intuitive
however it’s also hard because sometimes
it doesn’t seem like you’re making any
progress
but if you understand how these networks
are forming how neural signaling works
and how synapses are strengthening and
forming new networks it can be extremely
beneficial for your progress and I look
at it as you are expanding these neural
networks and it can take a long time and
a lot of hard work but eventually you’re
able to tap into them and as you tap
into them in a way you’re able to
increase your perception of reality and
your cognitive enhancement I truly feel
that a greater awareness
an understanding of brain function can
be a powerful tool to help you succeed
at great things thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: