INSR and glycogen storage disease VI: Otherwise, various functions for insulin receptor signaling in the brain have been suggested in normal neurophysiology, such as insulin receptor signaling maybe play a important role in synaptic plasticity and cognitive function,and several lines of work in both laboratory animals and humans suggest that when neurons in cognitive brain regions such as the hippocampus and cerebral cortex do not make enough insulin or cannot respond to insulin properly, everything from very mild memory loss to severe neorodegenerative diseases can result.