A technique developed at Western University to visually iron out the wrinkles and folds in one region of the brain may provide researchers a more accurate picture to understand brain disorders.
The hippocampus is a region of the brain often looked at by clinicians and researchers for clues to understand disease progression and response to treatment for brain disorders. Made up of two seahorse-shaped brain structures, the hippocampus is located at the centre of the brain and plays an important role in memory formation.
It is one of the first regions of the brain to show damage from Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases and is implicated in epilepsy and major depressive disorder. The anatomy of the hippocampus differs greatly from person to person, specifically when looking at the way that it folds in on itself.
Thrilled to see Paradromics’ $20M fund raise lead by the talented Dr. Amy Kruse! Paradromics is building a brain computer interface supported by DARPA’s Biologi… See More.
The investment demonstrates confidence in Paradromics as a well-positioned player in the $200 billion BCI therapy market. Last year, Paradromics successfully completed testing of its platform, demonstrating the largest ever electrical recording of cortical activity that exceeded more than 30000 electrode channels in sheep cortex. This recording allowed researchers to observe the brain activity of sheep in response to sound stimuli with high fidelity.
“We are combining the best of neural science and medical device engineering to create a robust and reliable platform for new clinical therapies,” said Paradromics CEO Matt Angle. “This funding round is a validation of both our technology and strategic vision in leading this important developing market.”
The current funding round follows $10M in early stage private funding as well as $15M of public funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Defense (DARPA).
Surgeons at Duke University Hospital have successfully implanted a next-generation artificial heart in a 39-year-old man with heart failure, becoming the first medical team in North America to perform the procedure.
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.
“The test comprised a set of tasks designed to measure different dimensions of cognitive ability that had been designed for application in both citizen science and clinical research. A number of my colleagues contacted me in parallel to point out that this provided an opportunity to gather important data on how the pandemic and COVID-19 illness were affecting mental health and cognition.”
Papers referenced in the video: A new aging measure captures morbidity and mortality risk across diverse subpopulations from NHANES IV: A cohort study. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30596641/
Nir Barzilai, Albert Einstein School of Medicine. TAME Q&A: Lessons for Progress on Aging.
About Nir Barzilai: Nir Barzilai, MD, is a Professor in the Department of Endocrinology Medicine and the Department of Genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is also the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Barzilai is the founding director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Nathan Shock Center for Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH); the center is coordinating 80 investigators and six program projects on the biology of aging. He is also the director of the Glenn Center of Excellence in the Biology of Human Aging. He is a chaired professor of medicine and of genetics and a member of the Diabetes Research Center and the divisions of endocrinology and geriatrics. Dr. Barzilai’s interests focus on several basic mechanisms in the biology of aging, including the biological effects of nutrients on extending life and the genetic determinants of life span. His team discovered many longevity gene in humans, and they further characterized the phenotype and genotype of humans with exceptional longevity through NIH awards. He also has an NIH Merit award investigating the metabolic decline that accompanies aging and its impact on longevity. Dr. Barzilai has published more than 270 peer-reviewed papers, reviews and chapters in textbooks. Dr. Barzilai serves on several editorial boards and advisory boards of pharmaceutical and start-up companies, and is a reviewer for numerous journals. A Beeson Fellow for Aging Research, Dr. Barzilai has received many other prestigious awards, including the Senior Ellison Foundation Award, the 2010 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction in Aging Research, the NIA–Nathan Shock Award and a merit award from the NIA for his contributions in elucidating metabolic and genetic mechanisms of aging and was the 2018 recipient of the IPSEN Longevity award. He is leading the TAME (Targeting/Taming Aging with Metformin) Trial, a multi-center study to prove the concept that multi morbidities of aging can be delayed in humans and change the FDA indications to allow for next generation interventions. He is a founder of CohBar Inc. (now public company) and Medical Advisor for Life Biosciences. He is on the board of AFAR and a founding member of the Academy for Lifespan and Healthspan. He has been featured in major papers, TV programs, and documentaries (TEDx and TEDMED) and has been consulting or presented the promise for targeting aging at The Singapore Prime Minister Office, several International Banks, The Vatican, Pepsico, Milkin Institute, The Economist and Wired Magazine. His book, Age Later: Health Span, Life Span, and the New Science of Longevity, was published by St. Martin’s Press in June of 2020.
“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.
