'Bilingual' neurons may reveal the secrets of brain disease
A team of researchers from the University of Montreal and McGill University have discovered a type of "cellular bilingualism" a phenomenon that allows a single neuron to use two different methods of communication to exchange information. "Our work could facilitate the identification of mechanisms that disrupt the function of dopaminergic, serotonergic and cholinergic neurons in diseases such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's and depression," wrote Dr. Louis-Eric Trudeau of the University of Montreal's Department of Pharmacology and Dr. Salah El Mestikawy, a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and professor at McGill's Department of Psychiatry. An overview of this discovery was published in the Nature Reviews Neuroscience journal.