This patient education program explains amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease) including the causes, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment options. This resource is a MedlinePlus Interactive Health Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine, designed and developed by the Patient Education Institute.

Anatomy and Physiology is a dynamic textbook for the two-semester human anatomy and physiology course for life science and allied health majors. The book is organized by body system and covers standard scope and sequence requirements. Its lucid text, strategically constructed art, career features, and links to external learning tools address the critical teaching and learning challenges in the course. The web-based version of Anatomy and Physiology also features links to surgical videos, histology, and interactive diagrams.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A recent study published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications has found a potential mechanism for the initiation and development of Parkinson’s disease and it appears red blood cells may be partly to blame. Parkinson’s is a chronic and progressive neurodegenerative disorder commonly associated with tremors, muscle stiffness, and impaired movement. While these symptoms are caused by the deterioration of nerve cells in the brain, the precise cause of the disease is still not fully understood. What is known is that the development of Parkinson’s is associated with the aggregation of toxic forms of a protein named alpha-synuclein (or alpha-syn, for short) in the brain. Recent evidence, however, suggests alpha-syn found in the blood can also be problematic and this has been implicated as a contributor to brain-cell breakdown..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Among the many complications patients with diabetes can experience, cognitive decline is one of them. Diabetes-induced cognitive decline, or DICD, begins with damage to the central nervous system and can result in impaired learning, memory, and judgment. A recent study found that in mice with DICD, injection with the antidiabetic protein FGF1 improved cognition. In a water maze task designed to test memory, diabetic mice treated with FGF1 (db/db+FGF1) reached their goal significantly faster than untreated mice with diabetes (db/db). And the brains of untreated mice (db/db) showed more shrinkage than those of treated mice (db/db+FGF1). Further research should help clarify how FGF1 reduces symptoms of both diabetes and DICD and whether FGF1 might be an effective treatment option for patients with DICD..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Identify the spinal cord, cerebral lobes, and other brain areas on a diagram of the brainDescribe the basic functions of the spinal cord, cerebral lobes, and other brain areas

This course provides an outline of vertebrate functional neuroanatomy, aided by studies of comparative neuroanatomy and evolution, and by studies of brain development. Topics include early steps to a central nervous system, basic patterns of brain and spinal cord connections, regional development and differentiation, regeneration, motor and sensory pathways and structures, systems underlying motivations, innate action patterns, formation of habits, and various cognitive functions. In addition, lab techniques are reviewed and students perform brain dissections.

Development of the Central Nervous System (CNS) includes development of the brain, spinal cord, optic and auditory systems, as well as surrounding supporting cells including ependymal cells, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and microglia. Information within this page will exclude development of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) which includes nerve and ganglia formation.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"How does a person experiencing anesthesia lose consciousness? Despite billions of surgeries, scientists still don’t fully understand what happens in the brain when a patient goes under. New research in the journal Anesthesiology, however, provides a few more clues. Working in a group of patients with epilepsy, scientists used a new information measure to evaluate electrocorticography data -- and found that with anesthesia, there is a reduction in information integration and network connectivity. The team recorded electrocorticograms, or intracranial E-E-Gs, from nine patients who were anesthetized predominantly with propofol and underwent surgical treatment for epilepsy in China. To assess information integration, the team used a measure called [genuine permutation cross mutual information], or G-P-C-M-I. In an earlier study, they found the measure performed better than others using scalp EEG recordings..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, or NMOSD, is a rare auto-immune demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. Now considered a separate disorder from multiple sclerosis, NMOSD can be severely disabling and life-threatening, with a reported mortality of between 7 and 32%. The hallmark of the disease is recurrent attacks of optic neuritis and/or transverse myelitis that result in accumulating, irreversible disability, including blindness and paraplegia. Approximately 75 to 90% of patients with NMOSD have a disease-specific, pathogenic IgG autoantibody against the aquaporin-4 water channel, or AQP4. This antibody is thought to bind to AQP4 on astrocyte foot processes at the blood-brain barrier. This causes damage to astrocytes and the blood-brain barrier itself through several mechanisms, including the formation of the membrane attack complex through activation of the complement component C5b9..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Malignant gliomas are the most common and the deadliest type of tumor affecting the central nervous system. Even after surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, gliomas can still have a poor prognosis. But growing evidence is pointing to one promising target for fighting glioma. Exosomes are tiny sacs of cellular matter implicated in numerous cell processes. including signaling and communication and glioma progression. miRNAs are among the most important glioma-related payloads shuttled between cells by exosomes. In addition to increasing the risk of developing glioma. miRNAs can confer chemotherapy drug resistance from one cell to another or they can even help inhibit glioma tumor growth. Researchers are discovering that exosomal proteins may play similar roles. Understanding how exosomes operate and how they might be manipulated. could help researchers and clinicians deliver more powerful anti-cancer therapies to patients with glioma..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Stroke is the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. Most strokes are classified as ischemic, meaning they involve blockage of blood supply. There are no effective treatments for ischemic stroke or its complications, but several types of cells naturally produce molecules that can help heal ischemic tissue. These molecules are packaged and released within sacs called exosomes that can deliver them to other cells, making exosomes promising targets for stroke therapy. For example, some exosomes can exert anti-inflammatory effects, promote blood vessel formation, and support the development of new neurons. Beneficial exosomes can also suppress cell death and regulate immune responses. Studies on rat and rabbit stroke models have supported the clinical potential of exosomes to promote healing after stroke and a few clinical trials in humans are currently underway..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A new study suggests that transferring gut microbes from aged to young adult mice has measurable effects on parts of the central nervous system, highlighting the importance of the gut–brain axis in aging. Researchers performed fecal transplants from aged or age-matched donors to younger adult mice. The two groups showed significant differences in their microbial profiles. After transplantation, young adult recipients showed no significant changes in markers of anxiety, explorative behavior, or locomotor activity. But recipients did show impaired spatial learning and memory, as measured by a maze test. These changes were paralleled by alterations in the expression of proteins associated with synaptic plasticity and neurotransmission and changes in microglial cells in the hippocampus — the learning and memory center of the brain..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Small metabolites produced by gut microbes can directly affect the central nervous system, but it’s unclear if these molecules influence very early stages of neural development. To find out, researchers recently compared normal and germ-free zebrafish embryos. There were no gross morphological differences, but neural gene expression was significantly suppressed in the germ-free embryos and this suppression was eliminated by treatment with zebrafish gut metabolites. Specifically, 354 genes were downregulated in germ-free compared with normal embryos and just a single treatment with zebrafish gut metabolites restored the normal expression levels of 39 of these genes. The downregulated genes were involved in important neurodevelopmental pathways, such as transcriptional regulation and Wnt signalling and closer investigation at the cellular level confirmed that Wnt-dependent developmental features were disrupted in the germ-free embryos..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Extracellular vesicles (EVs) function in many physiological events ranging from normal cellular activity to pathogenic processes. Some EVs prepared in vitro have exhibited therapeutic effects in preclinical models of immune or neurodegenerative disease. In a recent study, researchers generated EVs enriched with HSPB8 (small heat shock protein B8) in vitro from oligodendroglia (OLs). HSPB8 protects cells from oxidative stress-mediated cell death by supporting autophagic activity and could be carried by EVs. Both the native OL-EVs and the HSPB8-enriched OL-EVs were internalized by a microglial cell line and primary mixed neural cultures without inducing cell death. The HSPB8-enriched OL-EVs increased the endogenous production of HSPB8 mRNA. Both EV subsets helped maintain cellular homeostasis during chronic inflammation by increasing autophagic vesicle formation..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This text been designed for an undergraduate human anatomy and physiology course at a medium sized public university. This text has been modified from the original OpenStax text to encourage more active reading for an early undergraduate student taking the first semester of a year-long human anatomy and physiology course sequence. This text has been targeted to our student population, consisting primarily of first semester pre-nursing and kinesiology majors at a university with a high proportion of first generation and PELL-eligible students who benefit from lower barriers to entry into the field. Therefore, freely-available and differently presented text can be beneficial to this student population. This version was designed with the intention of distributing it section by section through a learning management system. If this mode of distribution is used, connection to an assessment tool could be utilized. Systems covered include skeletal, muscular, cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous.

As this text reorganizes and modifies an OpenStax’s Anatomy and Physiology 2e (see related resources link below), chapter numbers and chapter section numbers from the original have been preserved in this document. Material supplemented from other sources is cited within the text.

Course connections: Undergraduate courses aimed towards freshmen or sophomore, including Anatomy and Physiology, Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology, Physiology, Introduction to Physiology, Human Biology or similar with a human focus.