The recreation of the human brain is giving clues to essentially how we engineer a super brain someday đ.
Nobodyâs quite sure what it means yet. But weâre sure that itâs important.
This is leading to even better brain engineering đ đ đ đ đ.
Computer-augmented brains, cures to blindness, and rebuilding the brain after injury all sound like science fiction. Today, these disruptive technologies arenât just for Netflix, âTerminator,â and comic book fodder â in recent years, these advances are closer to reality than some might realize, and they have the ability to revolutionize neurological care.
Neurologic disease is now the worldâs leading cause of disability, and upwards of 11 million people have some form of permanent neurological problem from traumatic brain injuries and stroke. For example, if a traumatic brain injury has damaged the motor cortex â the region of the brain involved in voluntary movements â patients could become paralyzed, without hope of regaining full function. Or some stroke patients can suffer from aphasia, the inability to speak or understand language, due to damage to the brain regions that control speech and language comprehension.
Continue reading “Science Fiction Meets Neuro-Reality: Organoids to Rebuild the Brain” »
Could changing your diet play a role in slowing or even preventing the development of dementia? Weâre one step closer to finding out, thanks to a new UNLV study that bolsters the long-suspected link between gut health and Alzheimerâs disease.
The analysis â led by a team of researchers with the Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine (NIPM) at UNLV and published this spring in the Nature journal Scientific Reports â examined data from dozens of past studies into the belly-brain connection. The results? Thereâs a strong link between particular kinds of gut bacteria and Alzheimerâs disease.
UNLV study pinpoints 10 bacterial groups associated with Alzheimerâs disease, provides new insights into the relationship between gut makeup and dementia.
The University of Alberta is 3rd in the world for AI research.
Researchers meet the challenge of developing a model that uses speech traits to detect cognitive decline, paving the way for a potential screening tool.
Researchers are striving to make earlier diagnosis of Alzheimerâs dementia possible with a machine learning (ML) model that could one day be turned into a simple screening tool anyone with a smartphone could use.
Continue reading “Machine learning model able to detect signs of Alzheimerâs across languages” »
Hearing diminishes as we age â about 50% of adults 75 and over in the United States have disabling hearing loss.
Age-related hearing loss cannot currently be stopped.
Researchers from the University of Guelph and Tufts.
Continue reading “Omega-3 fatty acids may slow age related hearing loss” »
On a rush-hour train or a crowded flight, you might draw your limbs in close, shrinking as people fill the space. As it turns out, living cells behave similarly in confinement, adjusting their size while growing alongside other cells in sheets of tissue.
John Devany, then a graduate student in the lab of biophysicist Margaret Gardel, had been studying epithelial monolayersâsheets of cells that form barriers in skin and coat internal organsâwhen he noticed something interesting about how the cells were dividing.
âThe way people think about division is that a cell will grow to twice its size, divide, and repeat the cycle,â says Devany, the first author of the study, published in Developmental Cell. But in the epithelial tissue he was observing, division was proceeding as usual, but the daughter cells were ending up smaller than the mother. The team, collaborating with researchers from New York University, decided to investigate the mechanisms that control cell growth and cycle duration in tissue and discovered that the two processes are not directly coupled.
Continue reading “Cells in confinement and people in crowds have similar behaviors” »
Mothers who eat apples and herbs in early pregnancy could be protecting the brain health of their children and grandchildren, a Monash University study using genetic models has found.
The discovery is part of a project that found a motherâs diet can affect not just her childâs brain but also those of her grandchildren.
Published in Nature CellBiology, the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute study found that certain foods could help protect against the deterioration of brain function.
Continue reading “A motherâs diet can protect her grandchildrenâs brains: genetic model study” »
In a world first, a quadriplegic man in the United States has regained touch and movement after surgeons successfully implanted microchips into his brain.
AI is then used to read, interpret and translate his thoughts into action.
Keith Thomas, 45, broke his neck in an accident and became paralysed from his chest down.
Continue reading “AI-powered brain implants restore touch and movement to paralysed man” »
Low-grade inflammation contributes to age-related decline and impairment, but the precise pathways responsible for this inflammation and their impact on natural aging have until now remained elusive.
A study headed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) has now shown that a molecular signaling pathway known as cGAS/STING plays a critical role in driving chronic inflammation and functional decline during aging. Andrea Ablasser, PhD, and colleagues found that blocking the STING protein suppressed inflammatory responses in human senescent cells and tissues, and reduced aging-related inflammation in multiple peripheral organs and in the brain in mice.
The researchers in addition studied the effects of blocking the STING protein in aged mice. As expected by its central role in driving inflammation, inhibiting STING alleviated markers of inflammation both in the periphery and in the brain. âNotably, various aging-related immune signature genes were significantly attenuated as a result of STING inhibition,â they stated. And importantly, animals receiving STING inhibitors displayed significant enhancements in spatial and associative memory, as well as improved muscle strength and physical endurance.
New research on mice has shed light on how high blood pressure causes changes to arteries in the brain, a process that leads to vascular dementia. The research, led by University of Manchester scientists, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [1] has uncovered a route to developing the first ever drug treatments for vascular dementia that directly target a cause of the condition.
High blood pressure is the main cause of vascular dementia, a condition characterised by poor blood flow to the brain. The reduced blood supply starves brain cells of nutrients and over time they become damaged and die. Symptoms of vascular dementia include loss of energy, lack of concentration and poor memory.
Itâs normal for the brainâs arteries to narrow and widen in response to changes in blood pressure. However, consistently high blood pressure causes arteries to stay narrow and restrict the brainâs blood supply. Until now, it was not known why.
