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Summary: Study reveals an abundance of the CRMP2 protein in people with schizophrenia. The findings could lead to a blood-based biomarker test for the mental health disorder.

Source: SBPMDI

Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys have discovered how levels of a protein could be used in the future as a blood-based diagnostic aid for schizophrenia. The activity of the protein, which is found in both the brain and blood, affects neural connections in human brains and is uniquely imbalanced in people diagnosed with the condition. The research also provides guidance for future analyses into the molecular basis of this serious, disabling mental disorder.

After controlling for factors such as age, sex, handedness, first language, education level, and other variables, the researchers found that those who had contracted COVID-19 tended to underperform on the intelligence test compared to those who had not contracted the virus. The greatest deficits were observed on tasks requiring reasoning, planning and problem solving, which is in line “with reports of long-COVID, where ‘brain fog,’ trouble concentrating and difficulty finding the correct words are common,” the researchers said.

People who have recovered from COVID-19 tend to score significantly lower on an intelligence test compared to those who have not contracted the virus, according to new research published in The Lancet journal EClinicalMedicine. The findings suggest that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 can produce substantial reductions in cognitive ability, especially among those with more severe illness.

“By coincidence, the pandemic escalated in the United Kingdom in the middle of when I was collecting cognitive and mental health data at very large scale as part of the BBC2 Horizon collaboration the Great British Intelligence Test,” said lead researcher Adam Hampshire (@HampshireHub), an associate professor in the Computational, Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Laboratory at Imperial College London.

Continue reading “Large study finds COVID-19 is linked to a substantial deficit in intelligence” »

Links to biological age calculators:
Levine’s PhenoAge calculator is embedded as an Excel file:

https://michaellustgarten.com/2019/09/09/quantifying-biological-age/

Continue reading “Quantifying Biological Age: Blood Test #3 in 2021” »

AI is entering take-off mode just as we exit an economic downturn caused by the pandemic. Get ready for a productivity boom.

More TAME! The first part of this has a lot of result data.

Foresight Biotech & Health Extension Meeting sponsored by 100 Plus Capital.
2021 program & apply to join: https://foresight.org/biotech-health-extension-program/

Continue reading “TAME Q&A: Lessons for Progress on Aging | Nir Barzilai, Albert Einstein School of Medicine” »

“It’s an extraordinary paper with some extraordinary claims,” says Gray Camp, a developmental biologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, whose lab last year reported² growing brain organoids that contained a gene common to Neanderthals and humans. The latest work takes the research further by looking at gene variants that humans lost in evolution. But Camp remains sceptical about the implications of the results, and says the work opens more questions that will require investigation.

Humans are more closely related to Neanderthals and Denisovans than to any living primate, and some 40% of the Neanderthal genome can still be found spread throughout living humans. But researchers have limited means to study these ancient species’ brains — soft tissue is not well preserved, and most studies rely on inspecting the size and shape of fossilized skulls. Knowing how the species’ genes differ from humans’ is important because it helps researchers to understand what makes humans unique — especially in our brains.

The researchers, led by Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, used the genome-editing technique CRISPR–Cas9 to introduce the Neanderthal and Denisovan form of a gene called NOVA1 into human pluripotent stem cells, which can develop into any cell type. They cultured these to form organoids, clumps of brain-like tissue, up to 5 millimetres across, alongside normal human brain organoids for comparison.

Those who received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine are 88% protected against severe cases of then Delta variant — now the dominant coronavirus strain in the US — according to one new s…

We’ve seen helmets and AI that can spot brain tumors, but a new hard hat can actually treat them, too.

As part of the latest neurological breakthrough, researchers used a helmet that generates a magnetic field to shrink a deadly tumor by a third. The 53-year-old patient who underwent the treatment ultimately died due to an unrelated injury, but an autopsy of his brain showed that the procedure had removed 31% of the tumor mass in a short time. The test marked the first noninvasive therapy for a deadly form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma.

The helmet features three rotating magnets connected to a microprocessor-based electronic controller operated by a rechargeable battery. As part of the therapy, the patient wore the device for five weeks at a clinic and then at home with the help of his wife. The resulting magnetic field therapy created by the helmet was administered for two hours initially and then ramped up to a maximum of six hours per day. During the period, the patient’s tumor mass and volume shrunk by nearly a third, with shrinkage appearing to correlate with the treatment dose.

4:47 BioAge, 8:10 Church talking about how controlling aging is no longer speculative, 10:44 urging caution as they are not really talking about turning 67 year olds into 20 year olds. Near the end Church mentions A.I. an exponential possibilities of hitting all the pathways at once.

Recently, Avi Roy, alongside Nathan Cheng & Laura Minquini, hosted the second Longevity Panel discussion, which assembled some of the brightest minds working on reversing aging, and enhancing health and life span.

Continue reading “Longevity Panel II — The Scientists Working of Reversing Aging | Part 1” »