THE DORSAL COLUMN I’m going there to test some of my hypotheses in actual motor neurons from ALS patients to see if what I’m thinking is actually correct.” Hawley says he is still interested in studying neurodegenerative diseases like ALS after completing his doctoral studies. The research team hopes to follow up this study by identifying the specific features that drive microRNA dysregulation and protein aggregation in the disorder.
HAIR, CORTISOL & MUMMIES HOW YOUR BRAIN’S STRESS RESPONSE CAN LEAVE MARKS ON YOUR BODY THAT LAST A MILLENNIUM BY SAM MESTERN
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VOLUME 1 // ISSUE 1 a sudden plummet in stress levels. Researchers theorize that this may be the result of failing organs – the disease had progressed too far, and the individual could no longer mount a proper stress response. But, with no written record of this individual, how do we know so much about him more than 1,000 years following his death? As it turns out, researchers at Western University can utilize hormones found in human hair to reconstruct a ‘timeline’ of experienced stress in the months leading up to death. The above example comes from the study “Integrating cortisol and isotopic analyses of archeological hair: Reconstructing individual experiences of health and stress”, the result of a collaboration between the Longstaffe and Van Uum labs at Western University. In this study, researchers took samples from mummified remains in the Nazca region of Peru. In addition to assessing stress hormones found in hair, the researchers measured levels of carbon and nitrogen in the hair, which differ in response to a changing diet. Combining dietary and stress measures from hair composition allowed researchers to correlate dietary changes with stress levels, which may inform them as to whether the stress is resulting from famine or otherwise. In total, hair samples were gathered from 14 individuals (ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 years old), and researchers then took on the task of measuring stress in all of these samples. Surprisingly, this record of stress can be maintained in hair many centuries after death.
round 1,000 – 2,000 years ago, an individual in the Nazca region of Peru succumbed to an illness that had been afflicting them for months. Due to poor record-keeping, we are not sure exactly when this individual – identified as CAH493 – lived, nor do we know exactly where he was found. But what researchers can reconstruct may surprise you. We know, for example, in the months preceding his death, the individual experienced mounting physiological stress – likely the rumblings of the illness that would take his life. Two months before his death, timeline reconstruction was stress levels were peaking, they were ill. This accomplished by measuring levels of the Very ill. One month prior, things took a stress hormone ‘cortisol’ incorporated turn for the worse – CAH493 experienced SOCIETY OF NEUROSCIENCE GRADUATE STUDENTS
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