István Katona's article on the front page of Science Advances
The results published in the highly prestigious journal Science Advances, with Benjámin Barti as the first author, contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of tolerance accompanying the regular consumption of cannabis at the molecular level.
The 86 billion nerve cells in our brains communicate with each other through about 100 trillion synapses. The efficiency of their operation varies continuously in space and time, which is crucial for the coding processes of our nervous system. Feedback mechanisms play an important role in adjusting the strength of synapses, and the first two authors of a 1995 paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience were István Katona, then working in Tamás Freund's group, and Beáta Sperlágh, then working in Szilveszter E. Vizi's group. Researchers at our institute have contributed to discovering the molecular and anatomical organization and physiological and pathophysiological significance of the retrograde endocannabinoid signaling pathway with significant results in the last two decades.
First authored by PhD student Benjámin Barti, working in István Katona's group, their latest discovery of how the spatial location of cannabinoid receptors regulates the efficiency of synapses is now published in Science Advances. 