Our speaker this month is Jordan Sparks with the Sparks Brain Preservation organization in Oregon. Our event is in ZOOM Only, no in person meeting this month, meeting ins ZOOM on Thursday, April 30th, opening at 6:00 PM for our social hour, with the main event starting at 7:00 PM Eastern Time Jordan will tell us about his project, which was formerly the Oregon Brain Preservation, and before that Jordan formed Oregon Cryonics. This is an entirely different type of bio-stasis then cryonics. Their stated goal is to preserve the structure of the entire brain at a fine ultrastructural level. This includes the synaptic architecture as well as detailed molecular information such as protein post-translational modifications, cellular epigenetic patterns, and subcellular distributions of molecules.
Category: neuroscience
Mapping Gene Variants Reveals New Neurodevelopmental Condition
By mapping all the possible variations in a single gene, researchers have uncovered a previously hidden neurodevelopmental condition.
ReNU syndrome is a rare, inherited neurodevelopmental disorder identified in 2024 that affects brain function, development, and motor skills and is predicted to affect tens of thousands of individuals worldwide.
Not all Alzheimer’s leads to dementia
One possible explanation is that resilient brains are better at repairing themselves during Alzheimer’s. “Perhaps they can add new brain cells to a network that is degenerating”, the author says.
This idea is linked to a process called adult neurogenesis, which refers to the birth of new brain cells (neurons) in the adult brain. It has been well-established in other animals, but its existence in humans has been debated for years.
To study this, the team used human brain tissue from the Netherlands Brain Bank, which collects and stores donated brain samples for research. They included brains from control donors with no brain pathology, Alzheimer’s patients, and individuals with Alzheimer’s pathology who remained resilient to developing dementia.
The team focused on a small part of the brain’s memory center, likely one of the few areas where these new brain cells could form. “These cells are extremely rare, so we had to develop new ways to find them,” the author says. “We really zoomed in on the exact spot where we expected them to be.”
The team found what they were looking for: so-called “immature” neurons. These cells resemble young, not fully developed neurons. “Even at an average age of over 80, we still found these immature neurons in all groups,” the author says.
But the biggest surprise came next. While the team had expected to find much more of these cells in the resilient group than in the Alzheimer’s patients, the difference was not as big as expected.
Surprisingly, the team found that the key difference lies in how the immature neurons behave. “In resilient individuals, these cells seem to activate programs that help them survive and cope with damage,” the author says. “We also see lower signals related to inflammation and cell death.”
How the architecture of the prefrontal cortex shapes our creativity
When a writer comes up with a striking metaphor, when an engineer solves a tricky problem by combining seemingly unrelated tools, or when a child invents the rules of a new game, what happens in the brain? In cognitive neuroscience, creativity is defined as the ability to produce ideas that are both original and relevant within a given context.
For several years, one hypothesis has gained traction in this field of research: Creativity involves two major brain networks. On the one hand, the default mode network (DMN), associated with the spontaneous generation of ideas and free associations. On the other hand, the executive control network (ECN) comes into play when we deliberately control our thinking in order to achieve a goal.
“Creativity is, in a sense, the result of dynamic cooperation between these two networks,” explains Emmanuelle Volle, neurologist and co-leader of the FrontLab team at the Paris Brain Institute. “We believe that creative ideas do not emerge from nothing, but result from the synthesis and reorganization of existing knowledge stored in semantic memory.”
A Popular Senolytic Treatment Causes Brain Damage in Mice
A new study calls for caution in using the well-known senolytic treatment of dasatinib and quercetin (D+Q), showing that it causes damage in certain regions of the brain, similar to what is observed in multiple sclerosis [1].
Stem cell senescence prevents brain repair
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a brain disorder in which the patient’s own immune system attacks oligodendrocytes: cells in the nervous system that provide a myelin coating for neurons, which is essential for their function and survival. MS is much more common in older patients, who are also more likely to have progressive disease and a worse response to treatment.
Self-organizing “pencil beam” laser could help scientists design brain-targeted therapies
Researchers have found that a “pencil beam” laser allows brain imaging 25 times faster than current methods. This could help scientists quickly test whether new drugs for diseases like Alzheimer’s or ALS are reaching their targets in the brain.
After a surprising discovery that overcomes a longstanding problem in fiber optics, MIT researchers demonstrated a biomedical imaging technique that is faster and more precise than other methods, which could help scientists and clinicians study new brain therapies.
Study investigates how the brain maintains consciousness during physiological failure
Near-death experiences continue to challenge the scientific understanding of consciousness: how can vivid and structured reports be explained at moments of extreme physiological failure? This is the central question addressed by neuroscientist Charlotte Martial, who will take part in the 15th “Behind and Beyond the Brain” Symposium, organised by the Bial Foundation.
A researcher at the University of Liège, Belgium, Charlotte Martial studies states of consciousness under conditions of unresponsiveness, such as cardiac arrest or general anesthesia. In her presentation, she will introduce the most recent neuroscientific models that seek to explain these experiences, integrating neurobiological data with subjective descriptions.
Her research suggests that near-death experiences may correspond to natural mental states, potentially serving an adaptive function in extreme situations, contributing to how the brain copes with threat or collapse.
A Billionaire-Backed Startup Wants to Grow ‘Organ Sacks’ to Replace Animal Testing
As the Trump administration phases out the use of animal experimentation across the federal government, a biotech startup has a bold idea for an alternative to animal testing: nonsentient “organ sacks.”
Bay Area-based R3 Bio has been quietly pitching the idea to investors and in industry publications as a way to replace lab animals without the ethical issues that come with living organisms. That’s because these structures would contain all of the typical organs—except a brain, rendering them unable to think or feel pain. The company’s long-term goal, cofounder Alice Gilman says, is to make human versions that could be used as a source of tissues and organs for people who need them.
For Immortal Dragons, a Singapore-based longevity fund that’s invested in R3, the idea of replacement is a core strategy for human longevity. “We think replacement is probably better than repair when it comes to treating diseases or regulating the aging process in the human body,” says CEO Boyang Wang. “If we can create a nonsentient, headless bodyoid for a human being, that will be a great source of organs.”
The Singular Mind: All Conscious Beings Are One
What if there is only one mind in the universe… and everything you call “yourself” is just a fragment of it? What if the sense that you are separate—from others, from the world, from everything—is not a truth… but an illusion? The physicist Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founding figures of quantum mechanics, proposed something that goes far beyond science: that consciousness is not divided. Not split between individuals. Not generated separately in billions of brains. But singular. One. The same awareness looking through countless perspectives. And if that is true, then the deepest question becomes unavoidable: are you truly an individual consciousness… or are you the universe itself, experiencing itself from one point of view?
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Editing brain circuits to enhance memory!
Every thought, memory, and feeling we experience depends on trillions of tiny connection points in the brain called synapses. These are the junctions where one neuron passes signals to another, forming the vast communication network known as the connectome—the brain’s wiring diagram. Although scientists have developed powerful tools to increase or decrease neural activity, directly redesigning the brain’s physical wiring has remained far more difficult.
A research team has now developed a molecular tool that makes such structural editing possible. The new platform, called SynTrogo (Synthetic Trogocytosis), enables researchers to induce astrocytes to selectively remodel synaptic connections in a targeted brain circuit.
The system works like a molecular lock-and-key mechanism. Neurons in the target circuit are engineered to display a molecular “tag” on their surface (a lock), while nearby astrocytes are engineered with a matching binding partner (a key). When the two cells come into contact, the astrocyte is induced to “nibble” part of the neuronal membrane and nearby synaptic material through a trogocytosis-like process—a form of partial cellular uptake seen in several biological systems. By harnessing this process synthetically, the researchers created a way to selectively reduce synaptic connectivity in a defined neural circuit.
The team then asked whether these cellular changes translated into behavioral effects. In contextual fear-conditioning experiments, mice with SynTrogo-modified hippocampal circuits showed stronger memory than control animals. They displayed enhanced recall both two days after learning and 23 days later, indicating improvements in both recent and remote memory. Importantly, these mice also remained capable of extinction learning—the process by which previously learned fear responses are reduced when they are no longer appropriate—suggesting that SynTrogo strengthened memory without sacrificing cognitive flexibility.
Further analysis suggested that SynTrogo may place synapses into a more plastic, learning-ready state. Before learning, AMPA receptor-mediated synaptic responses were reduced, but after fear conditioning they recovered to control-like levels. This implies that the remodeled circuit may be particularly poised for experience-dependent strengthening when new learning occurs.