• Question: hi keith, so far as a scientist what is your most interesting dicovery you've com across ?

    Asked by srrk to Keith on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi srrk,

      The most interesting discovery relates to how drugs that act like nicotine, which are being used for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, work. We made the new discovery that nicotine-like drugs caused spikes in the calcium concentration in the nerve terminal, and we went on to find at that these spikes of calcium came from stores of calcium locked away inside the nerves. Such spikes had never been seen before in nerves. We think that by triggering these calcium spikes we can rescue the function of failing nerves, and hence boost nerve function. We’ll see, but it looks promising.

      If you check out my “Me and my work” page from the profile you’ll see a link from the word “video”. Here you can see a Youtube-based video of one such recording.

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