A team of Taiwanese, US and Hungarian researchers yesterday said that they have identified a group of cells that regulate anxiety in mice, which is expected to help reduce the side effects of anxiolytic drugs.
While about 2.8 million people in Taiwan in 2019 sought treatment for anxiety disorders, the number of people affected by anxiety might be larger than documented, Chen Hong-chen (陳鴻震), director-general of the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Department of Life Sciences told a news conference in Taipei.
How to regulate anxiety is vital for people in the information era, as well as for brain scientists, and the ministry is seeking more funding for brain-related research to catch up with more advanced countries, he said.
Photo: CNA
While the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex are known to affect anxiety and melancholy, the team found that mossy cells — a group of neurons in the hippocampal dentate gyrus — correlate with anxiogenic factors in the environment, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) professor Lien Cheng-chang (連正章) said.
The team used calcium imaging tools to observe neurological activity in the mice when they were exploring open or closed spaces in labyrinth models.
When the mice explored an anxiogenic environment that was bright and open, their mossy cell activity significantly increased, while their mossy cell activity dropped when they entered a closed space, showing that they felt safer, Lien said.
Photo: CNA
The team next used optogenetic and chemogenetic tools to regulate mossy cell activity in the mice and found that they performed less anxiety-induced avoidance behavior when their mossy cells were active, he said.
The paper, whose lead author was NYCU doctoral student Wang Kai-yi (王凱誼), was published in the journal Cell Reports on Sept. 14, with the paper featured on the issue’s cover.
Artist Tsai Yu-lin (蔡鈺麟), the father of NYCU assistant professor Tsai Yu-huan (蔡雨寰), painted the cover illustration after being inspired by the mossy cells’ shape and the optogenetic technique used by the team.
Kazu Nakazawa of the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US and Gabor Tamas of the University of Szeged in Hungary also contributed to the team’s research.
The team in Taiwan imported frozen sperm of a transgenic mouse model from the US, while Tamas’ team helped set up an in vivo juxtacellular recording technique, Lien said.
Hopefully, the team’s research will improve the understanding of anxiety and foster new treatments with fewer side effects, he said.
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS