Journal Article

Tactile fingertip sensations are critical for everyday life. Accordingly, tactile fingertip maps have been extensively studied in human primary somatosensory cortex. [...]

The human brain stores and retrieves tactile experiences, allowing object recognition by touch, the definition of haptic preferences, and the retrieval of past bodily experiences. However, little is known about the spatial code of tactile body memories, particularly whether encoding takes place in a body-centered (tactile) reference frame, not influenced by hand posture or visual cues, or whether it takes place in an external reference frame, where tactile information is integrated with proprioceptive and visual information. [...]

Anxiety disorders are common and impairing mental health conditions. Using data from 26,378 adults in the German National Cohort Study (NAKO), we investigated psychosocial and neuroimaging predictors of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms and panic attacks. [...]

Aging is the gradual accumulation of structural and functional changes in an organism over time, including immune remodeling and a progressive increase in basal inflammation, or inflammaging. The mTOR pathway is a central driver of aging-related diseases, such as cancer, chronic inflammation and neurodegeneration; pharmacological inhibition with rapamycin is associated with reduced aged-related morbidity and increased lifespan across species. [...]

To investigate whether antidiabetic drugs have a biological basis to be repurposed in PD prevention, we applied a drug target Mendelian randomization framework to assess associations between genetic variation in antidiabetic drug targets and PD risk or age at onset (AAO). Instrumental variables (IVs) were derived from GWAS summary statistics on fasting glucose (FG), glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), and gene expression data from GTEx. [...]

Parkinson disease (PD)-associated mutations in the LRRK2 gene hyperactivate LRRK2 kinase activity, leading to increased phosphorylation of a subset of RAB GTPases, which are master regulators of intracellular trafficking. In neurons, processive retrograde transport of autophagosomes is essential for autophagosome maturation and effective degradation of autophagosomal cargo in the axon. [...]

Multiple system atrophy (MSA) and Parkinson's disease (PD) are both α-synucleinopathies with distinct pathological features and disease courses. MSA is characterized by more extensive white matter damage and widespread cortical and subcortical cholinergic systems degeneration than PD. [...]

Body perception and movement control are altered in most neurological, neurodegenerative, and psychiatric diseases. The homuncular organization of the sensorimotor cortex, referring to the regular organization of neurons responsive to body movement and body touch, is therefore of fundamental relevance for brain health. [...]

Protein homeostasis is essential for maintaining normal cellular function. However, protein homeostasis efficiency declines with age, leading to the accumulation of aberrant protein structures associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD). [...]