My Chemical Balance

Our brain cells speak to each other using chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Excitatory neurotransmitters, like glutamate, increase the likelihood that neurons will send electrical signals to one another. Inhibitory neurotransmitters, like GABA, do the opposite and have a calming effect on our behaviour. Disrupting the brain’s finely tuned balance of inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters can lead to neurological disorders like epilepsy and schizophrenia. For years, scientists have investigated the role that proteins and other compounds have on this crucial chemical balance. Recently, neuroscientists found that GABA-controlled connections between neurons were affected in mice lacking the InSyn1 protein, which is normally detected across the adult brain (shown here in white). These mice had abnormally high electrical activity in the hippocampus, a region important for memory and cognition, and performed poorly on a memory task. Understanding how compounds like InSyn1 impact the brain’s chemical balance could help to predict neurological disorders.

Written by Gaëlle Coullon

Gaëlle Coullon

Writer

Gaëlle is a consultant and trainer in research communication and commercialisation. As an ex-neuroscientist, she is always looking for new ways to combine her love of writing with everything brain related.

• Images from work by Akiyoshi Uezu and colleagues
• Department of Cell Biology, Duke University Medical School, Durham, NC, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, December 2019