Researchers uncover diverse subtypes of serotonin-producing neurons
By Stephanie Dutchen, HMS Writer/Editor
It used to be enough to call a serotonergic neuron a serotonergic neuron.
These brain cells make the neurotransmitter serotonin, which helps regulate mood, appetite, breathing rate, body temperature and more.
Recently, however, scientists have begun to learn that these neurons differ from one another—and that the differences likely matter in dysfunction and disease.
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Read more about Time for a new definition
To an untrained observer, the electrical storm that takes place over the brain’s neural network seems a chaotic flurry of activity. But as neuroscientists understand it, the millions of neurons are actually engaged in a sort of tightly choreographed dance, a tango of excitatory and inhibitory neurons. How is...
A team of Harvard 
A new finding by Harvard stem cell biologists turns one of the basics of neurobiology on its head by demonstrating that it is possible to turn one type of already differentiated neuron into another within the brain....