2017/02/02
Keio University School of Medicine
National Institute for Physiological Sciences, National Institutes of Natural Sciences
A joint research group has identified the brain region responsible for avolition through experiments using mice. The group includes Associate Professor Kenji Tanaka and Professor Masaru Mimura from the Department of Neuropsychiatry and Professor Hideyuki Okano from the Department of Physiology at the Keio University School of Medicine; Professor Masahiko Watanabe from the Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine; Assistant Professor Hiroyuki Ohta from the National Defense Medical College; and Assistant Professor Hiromi Sano from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, National Institutes of Natural Sciences.
Avolition is a condition observed in many neurological diseases, such as dementia and cerebrovascular disease, but its cause was previously understood only as something that occurs when the brain sustains widespread damage. The research group discovered that damage to a limited population of cells in a brain region called the basal ganglia is sufficient to impair motivation, and that motivation cannot be maintained unless this cell population is healthy.
Going forward, this animal model of avolition will make it possible to explore treatments for avolition following brain injury, for which no therapeutic methods were previously known.
This research was published in the multidisciplinary scientific journal Nature Communications on February 1, 2017.
For the full press release, please see below.